C4T #3

I commented on Lois Lindemann's blog. The title of the first post I commented on is titled Back to School-Time to Set some Goals. This post was about what she expected for the school year ahead and goals she set for herself for the beginning of the school year like remembering all of her new students' name by the end of the first week. She also says how she would like to establish routines so she would not have to reinforce practical classroom routines every lesson.

My Comment:

Hello my name is Janae Ivory and I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. My major is Secondary Mathematics Education. I am very excited to become a high school math teacher, and reading your post about the goals you have set for yourself for the beginning of the school year has me more excited than ever. Setting goals are very important to me because it is a way for me to stay organized and to keep up with everything. I also want to commend you on trying to learn every students name in only a week’s time because im sure its a lot of names to learn. It was great reading your post, I hope you achieve all of your goals and have a wonderful school year. 

Her second post is titled (An Unusual) Measure for Measure. This post was about an experience this teacher had when trying to figure out how much weight would be enough for her car to carry and how many trips would she have to take. She stated in the post that she wasn't good at converting kilograms however she knew how much a cyclist weighed, so she used that to determine how much she could carry i n her car at once. She said in the end thatb was a great unit of measurement to use and she will be using Fabian Cancellaras (the name of the cyclist she used) in the future.

My Comment:

Hi my name is Janae Ivory, a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama, and I am a secondary mathematics  education major. This was a really cool post to read. It was so interesting to read how you used math in an everyday situation. When people learn what my major is they ask me why and say "when will you ever use math", but I just respond with "I love Math". But thanks for sharing this story, it was very entertaining to read. 

Blog Post #12

      Math is tough alone, and the hardest subject in school for some. I could only imagine how difficult it could be for a blind individual. In the video Teaching Math to the Blind Professor Art Karshmer introduces a tool that allows blind students to still use Braille, something they're familiar with, and electronic feedback. Instead of the math problem written in one horizontal line the student can align the math problem the way it should be. They are also able to receive verbal feedback of the math problem.
          I think this tool is very useful for blind students. It is important for them to understand math because as Professor Art Karshmer said in order to get a job in engineering, technology, computer sciences etc. math is an important part of the equation, and the easier it is to practice and understand it the better,  with this tool its definitely possible. As a future math teacher I am excited to know that there are instruments like the one in the video to help these students understand math more and gets them ready for the future ahead of them in what ever career path they choose to go on.
     The website  Teaching Visually Impaired has numerous articles of tools available for teachers to use with their students. In the article Math Adaptations by Carmen Willings she talks about what teachers can do to make math more understandable and even suggests which instruments ans tools work best with each area of math. -Janae Ivory

This short six minute YouTube video, Braille in the Classroom, it helps you understand how braille works, how it is helpful, and some of the different types of braille. One of the devices they use is called braille display. This device will connect to the computer and will transfer the text from a computer screen into braille for the student. In the YouTube video iPad Usage for the Blind usage for the blind</a> he shows us how to use the iPad from a blind person point of view. As he demonstrates, you can hear how he has the voice control instructing him in he background. The voice control helps him  find his apps, tools, or whatever item he is looking for. Having an iPad in the classroom would be very beneficial to the student. Especially since everything is changing into technology. -Macy Roe :)

Assistive technology can help students with learning disabilities leverage their education. It can be a wonderful tool for students that have Dysgraphia which affects a student's writing ability. This disability primarily affects handwriting and coherence. Students with this writing disorder will not perform efficiently when being taught how to form letters. Furthermore, they will probably forget how to correctly form words later because of improper movements of muscles required to write. However, there have been technologies created to help them counter this problem.

Dragon Dictation is a speech recognition application that  produces words you speak  by recording your voice. It allows you to update social media statuses such as facebook and twitter by speaking. Dragon allows you to speak and send emails or text messages. Additionally, people can create notes and reminders to help them navigate throughout the day. This technology could be useful for students in the classroom who have Dysgraphia because it would allow them to complete their writing assignments by speaking out their words. As a teacher I could allow a student to use their device to assist them in the writing process. This is another way technology is affecting education in a positive way because it is assisting students who have learning disabilities.-Justin Thomas

My family has a history of hearing impairment. My maternal grandfather wore hearing aids from his 40s on to his death at 89. My mother is very hard of hearing, as are most of her siblings. I have lost a significant amount of hearing in my right ear due to military service and I imagine my genetics don't help with that. I have often thought of what it would be like if I was afflicted with my family's impairment at a school age. This post was a great chance to see what would be available to me if I was a hearing impaired student today. The Hearing Loss Association of America has a section of its website dedicated to Hearing Assistive Technology. In the link they talk about an FM system. I have vivid memories of my grandfather using one of these to listen to the TV. After multiple complaints from my grandmother about him blasting Braves games at full volume they invested in one of these FM systems. He placed the receiver close to the speakers of the TV and he had it hooked into his hearing aids. As an educator, I can see this working well in the classroom. The teacher could simply wear the receiver around his or her neck, or keep it on the desk if it was powerful enough, and the student could take it from class to class. It seems kind of primitive in today's technological world, but if it isn't broke, don't fix it. I guess.

Linked here is a video from Oklahoma about Assistive Technologies that educators can use to help deaf/hearing impaired students. Around the 5:30 mark of the video, the iPad is discussed. It seems as though iPads are becoming quite the norm in classrooms these days. I found this short section of the video to be very interesting, as I'm expecting to have iPads available to me in my future classrooms. Here is a short video of deaf students using iPads for the first time. You can see how excited the children are, but also look and see how engaged they are in their learning. My wife, God bless her, is an avid Pinterest user and heard me talking about this blog post. She very quickly found this board. I don't really know how Pinterest works, but there is some really great information on that link. That's what's so great about our modern world today; there's so much information out there. I think that if we just put forth the effort, real effort, to find it, then we will always be in a position to help our students. -Kyle Parrish

Blog Post #11

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

Back to the Future
Brian Crosby, the speaker and the teacher in this video has shown plenty of examples on how he is able to capture the interest and encourage his students to learn in a fun and enthusiastic way. He allows his students to be involved in hands on activities such as the hot air balloon project or the soda can project. Crosby then has his students post what they learned during the science project to their blog instead of taking a 20 question test. I think what we can learn from him is that their isn't just one way to teach, that teachers should teach in a way that benefits the student the most. By doing this the student learns in a fun way and is most likely to remember what they learned.

Blended Learning Cycle
In this video Paul Anderson introduces Q.I.V.E.R.S., a system that proved well for his students. It stands for question, investigate, video, elaborate, review, and summary quiz. This is one method of teaching that I have not come across in this class yet. What we can learn about teaching and learning from this video is that teachers don't have to teach from power point presentations or just write notes on the white board, there are other ways like QU.I.V.E.R.S. that allows students to learn and be engaged in what is in front of them.

Sam Pane 4th Grade - Building Comics
In this video Mr. Pane was very active in his class. He opened class with a driving question and led a discussion with his class. They discussed their topic and he assigned them to create a comic about what they discussed, But before they did their own they built one together. I think what we ca learn about teaching and learning from Mr. Pane is to engage the class in a discussion to get them interested in what they will be learning and to get them involved in a test run for an activity before they do it on their own

Project 14: Project Based Learning Plan #2

Our group decided to assign a group project for 11th grade high school students. They will create a digital media project of their choice showing the whether or not the events of Pearl Harbor had an effect on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.They will have one week to complete the project. I have provided links to the rubrics that will be used, the project overview, the calendar that shows when each part of the project should be done, and the checklist we used to make sure our project our project was up to standards.

Project Overview

Project Calendar

Rubric for Individual Performance in a Group

Rubric for Evaluation of a Project

PBL Checklist

Blog Post #10

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

Mrs. Cassidy says plenty of times in all three videos that technology is not going anywhere, that teachers should strive to learn technology and use it to help students learn in a fun way. Mrs. Cassidy uses blogs, games, and Skype in her classroom. She allows her students to connect with students all around the world and discuss the things they do in the classroom. She organized her class in to centers, she says she has a reading center, a center where they use Nintendo DS for games, and a center where the students blog. I think the technique I would use that she uses is a class blog. I would start a blog where the students would blog every week about what they learned, if they liked what they learned and what they found difficult and easy. If I were to encounter any problems such as bad comments or for student to come across something inappropriate on the internet, I would educate my students on why its wrong to leave bad comments, and   why its important not to stray from the websites they are assigned to use. By using these approaches I would hope that students would be excited to come to class to learn and do projects, and to share their work with students all over the world.

C4K Summaries for October

London wrote a blog post tilted "You Don't See Me", this post was a poem about how she is different and would like for others to understand her situation before they judge her. I loved this poem she wrote because I feel like everyone is judged for the decisions they make and could easily relate to this poem. I commented that we can all learn not to pass judgement based off the decisions others make when we do not fully understand the situation and have not looked at it through the other persons perspective. I really liked her post.

Brody discussed finding a cure for aging in his blog post. He said he would love to find the cure because he would be able to make lots of money, he would be able to see generation after generation, and he would be able to invent lots of things because he would have all the time in the world. He ended his post asking if we would like to find the cure for aging. I first commented on the creativity of the subject and how it made me think. I also said that I would not like to find the cure for aging because everyone is meant to live and die, but if the cure was found, only a select few should know about it and use it to keep the earth in balance. Brody's post was very thought out and unique.

Eden wrote a descriptive poem on a wedding, He used plenty of descriptive words and told his image of a wedding. I commented on how much detail he used and how I loved his image of a wedding. He did a really good job. 

Oloti post was pictures of the plane he built with paper, cups, hot glue gun and more. His class was reading about Jeff Thomson, an artist who created many things like an elephant, car, boot, and a chicken with corrugated iron. I commented on how great his plane model looked and that I liked how he gave some background knowledge on Jeff Thomas because I have no idea who he is.

Project #12: Smart Board Tools