Category Archives: Educational Blogger

*EXPERIENCE CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE*

Posted on by

According to Gardener Campbell  “Personal Cyberinfrastructure”  is what we learn through the internet with no help, just though investigating the web to help solve our problems. We as students use this space to create a personal space where we share information, for our professional career or personal life. Campbell states:

“students not only would acquire crucial technical skills for their digital lives but also would engage in work that provides richly teachable moments ranging from multimodal writing to information science, knowledge management, bibliographic instruction, and social networking. Fascinating and important innovations would emerge as students are able to shape their own cognition, learning, expression, and reflection in a digital age, in a digital medium.”

“Pointing students to data buckets and conduits we’ve already made for them won’t do. Templates and training wheels may be necessary for a while, but by the time students get to college, those aids all too regularly turn into hindrances. For students who have relied on these aids, the freedom to explore and create is the last thing on their minds, so deeply has it been discouraged. Many students simply want to know what their professors want and how to give that to them. But if what the professor truly wants is for students to discover and craft their own desires and dreams, a personal cyberinfrastructure provides the opportunity. To get there, students must be effective architects, narrators, curators, and inhabitants of their own digital lives.”

The above quote is an example of what I created in my blog; I created my personal blog where I provided my opinions, and sources that can help others with their education career.  And Jim Groom reflects this also on his essay, our personal cyber space allows us as students to help each other out.

“The key here is the crafting of an identity with a purpose, the conscious consideration and creation of one’s professional/academic identity online: a domain of one’s own!”

 

*Reflection on AC230: 

What I expected to get out of this class was nothing close to what I have learned. I wasn’t aware of all these bloggers and their ideas on education. I expected to learn simple things but never on how to create a blog and what edupunk was etc. As the course proceeded I saw how little I really knew and how much I can incorporate what I had learned into my lessons, I found myself writing lesson plan ideas down, because the internet was something I could use for my future teaching career. The most important thing was the skills I learned with posting and embedding pictures and videos, incorporating that into my lesson plan. There wasn’t anything least important to me because everything I learned was something new and I knew at the moment that I could use that for my future lessons. Professor Smith made sure we knew what we were doing yet he allowed us to teach ourselves, after taking this course I feel like I’m capable of doing a lot more than I did before, I am definitely going to be using these techniques in my classroom.

Serendipitous Connections

Posted on by

So I came across a website that seems really great for anybody who is a PE k-12 major in this class.  I googled “Physical education blog posts” and found a really cool idea for applying technology to enhance physical education.  I like that this person isn’t settling with the same old ideas and seems to really be pushing for new ways to keep their class interesting for their students.  Apple products are so huge now and have apps that apply to just about everything, so why not try to incorporate it into class?  This is also important for aspiring physical education teachers because we will have to be able to show future employers how we can apply technology to our classroom.

EDpunks who?

Posted on by

Edpunks is the idea of teaching and learning through a system of doing it youself using internet and other approaches, it avoids things such as blackboard, powerpoint, where you are not really learning just storing information.

The whole idea is getting your hands dirty, it does not matter in which way you go about learning how to do something, the important thing is that your doing it yourself, and learning from your experience.

However there are many critics of this notion, not because its not a great movement but the lack that Anya Kamenetz fails to explain. Kamenetz explains that we can learn using other tools but has what may only be described as a very naive understanding of education (including online education).

In one blog someone described:

 “The way do-it-yourself learning is depicted in her guide, it substitutes presentations, resources and materials from professors and books for presentations, resources and materials online through videos and online documents,” he says. “There is no sense that it is do-it-yourself learning; it’s just putting digital in place of traditional learning materials.”

Edupunker

Posted on by

From reading about Edupunk from Never Mind the Edupunks; or, The Great Web 2.0 Swindle, I learned that Edupunk was created by Jim Groom and has sparked a lot of conversation around the internet. Following the trail lead to a book that was published by Anya Kamenetz who published the book DIY U. From there I found this video about the author getting interviewed on The Daily. In this interview she talks about the future of education.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYOgr9bGsc0&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

From there I found a Battle royal video with Jim Groom and Gardner Campbell in which Jim explains what Edupunk punk means. The quote can be seen here. From all these pieces of information I was able to give my own perspective on Edupunk. Edupunk was pretty much a rant about a certain group in this case blackboard and it evolved into a argument that pissed of a lot of people because of the DIY or Do It Yourself attitude.

 

Technology = A+++ Student’s…

Posted on by

Techno Education

is a English Language Arts teacher at MBHS.  Mrs. DeRaps, interacts with her students through blogging. She finds blogs “much easier to assess and to offer feedback on than are some other forms of traditional assessment”. I believe blogging is a great way to interact with the students. I mean who wouldn’t love learning through technology? Blogging is like facebook, you make a post and others comment. This is just great in my view! I love Mrs. DeRaps  way of motivating her students to actually do classwork through a fun, yet educational way. Mrs. DeRaps, developed rubrics to use with student blog posts, which gives her students a clear layout of exactly what she is expecting in their blogs. The rubrics makes it easier for Mrs.DeRaps to grade her students work. I know as a student I hate writing essay’s one after another, but Mrs.DeRaps idea made me realize that I can change that for my future students. Mrs. DeRaps states that blogs are “a lot more concise and quick”. Hence, there are no five to ten page literally analysis papers. This will instantly motivate students participation. However,  I agree with Mrs. DeRaps, this does not mean that there will be no five to ten page literally analysis papers, “it is just not appropriate for a blog”. Mrs. DeRaps and I both agree that “plagiarism is not okay on a research paper, the same is true in a blog post. The more that students link to the outside blogosphere and web pages, the more that their writing will be picked up on google. This is just good practice for social responsibility.”  Through Blogging students are not only doing school work but learning responsibilities as well.Furthermore, some students are not able to express their thoughts through language and writing. Blogging will help students to express their thoughts and ideas through media such as videos and images, etc. Even the U.S Department of Education is motivating  schools to enhance education through technology. “Creating online learning environments doesn’t just help teachers engage students.  It results in better learning outcomes across the board.”

Empowering Education Through Technology

Flexibility in the classroom

Posted on by

I was impressed by New York science teacher, Greg Benedis-Grab, in his blog,  .In his latest entry dated January 4, 2012 entitled “getting inspired by your studens” , he discussed how resourceful students can be and also how to be flexible in the classroom.Mr.Bendis-Grab made the point of how planning can interfere with spontaniety but points out that.

 If you have a clear understanding of your unit goals then flexibility can be built in without compromising the Science Standards or the scope and sequence of your science program.

I agree that planning is important and when the teacher is prepared he/she can accomodate changes to the lesson.Rhizomatic learning ,although being spontaneous ,does not exclude planning. From this blog I have strengthened my belief in planning and using students’ ideas and experiences to drive my lessons.There are a variety of experiences described by the blogger and science teachers can learn from his lessons .

Working with students

 

 

Helping our future generations learn languages

Posted on by

Bilingual Parents

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMOHtSkSPfA&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]

After researching I came across a bilingual educator named Ana Lomba who is the writer of “Help Young Children Learn Languages“. Lomba took it upon herself to make a blog where she helps parents out with ways they can teach their child a new language. I can relate to Lomba because wanting to be a future educator in the bilingual field, my main concern would be how and what are the best strategies my kids can use to learn the language. What interested me the most about her writing was that she really focused on the parent’s involvement in the child’s education. She stated that the best school help for the child is the education and guidance you give them yourself. A parent is the only one that knows exactly what their child needs and wants. Because the parent knows their child better than anyone else it is easier to come up with ways for them to learn. The best way for them to grasp a language is interacting with others. Separating the time of rehearsal is also crucial, taking it little by little a day is better than hours a day. According to Lomba the best strategy and secret weapon in language learning children are the encouragement and motivations parents give them. The information Lomba posts on her blogs are very essential for my future teaching career because now I can keep in mind these strategies to better help my students learn the language faster and at the same time involve the parents where we can work as a team.

 

 

physical education blog

Posted on by

Mr. Sickler has a weekly blog that he keeps that summarizes the week and helps students keep up if they missed a day. the blog can be found here at Mr. Sickler’s 6th grade blog. The week that just passed they played games like capture the flag,and Castle Ball. The weather was even posted on the blog and another cool thing is that the students communicate with the teacher throught this blog which is something I would consider doing because I plan to be a role model to my students. The blog also started talking about the next unit the students are going to particpate in. The activity is going to be line dancing. Information about line dancing can be found here.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/18652017?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0

btw look at the sweet dance moves by the teacher ^ which is only overshadowed by the cool music he chose to dance to

Has little to do with physical education but a great movie

 

Castle ball lesson plan

A mathematics Blog

Posted on by

I was searching and searching for a mathematics teacher with a blog that is similar to my idea of making mathematics fun for 7-12 mathematics education. I found a teacher from Massachusetts with a bachelors in mathematics that has been tecahing for three years, with not only a blog set-up but a whole website designed with lesson plans and games we could use in the classroom. I automatically knew I connected with this teacher when I saw his blog of Game 24 which was my favorite mathematics game in 5th grade, and was one of the reasons math became one of my passions. I think a way students can practice mathematics is by playing games. For example with Game 24 you are practicing multiplying, adding, subtracting, dividing and order of operations. And you can play more advanced Game 24 games, that include practicing perfect squares etc.

Future Physical Education

Posted on by

This image represents exactly the topics and learning that I am trying to teach for my future major. Physical education and Health education deals with exactly the words that are listed in this image. I like this image because it represents every category in my major and it is very important to teach these topics to all students. As a Physical education teacher, I will teach sports to students to motivate them to learn and enjoy on what they are participating in and teach the importance of health. Overall, students will have the skills and knowledge on all their participation and progress of PE. the blog I came across can be found here. The last post in his entry discussed how we future physical education teachers are supposed to grade the students. is it participation based? ,performance based?, and or discipline based?