Saturday, March 31, 2012

Blog#9

            I decided to read the first year 2008-09 and the last 2010-11 just to see how much he has grown over the years. Mr. Mclung learned a lot in his first year of teaching. As a new teacher Mr. Joe McClung was ready and willing to take control of his career. Mr. McClung was not afraid to try new technology or communicate with teachers and students. Although his first year was not prefect he leaned that McClung.J(2009) " NO LESSON IS EVER PERFECT. THE LESSON YOU TEACH AND THE ONE YOU PLAN ARE ALWAYS DIFFERENT." McClung ended his year blog with listen  to your students, so they will know you care and never stop learning, so  he is always able to make all lesson plans magical.
       In 2010-11 McClung was a third year teacher but first time teaching at the same school for more then one year. He was also the head coach of the cross country team. McClung has grown and his focus shifted from impressing the teachers and administrators, to keeping his students impressed. He made sure that he didn't get bored with his job by joining groups at the school that would give him a challenge. He enjoyed the PD session because he was always open to new ideas.
a man walking up stairs


I  really enjoyed reading Mr. McClung experiences as a new teacher, and after he was a teacher for three years. Most teachers think that when they finish school the learning will stop and they will know all the things needed to be a successful teacher Mr. McClung didn't.  I liked that as a first year teacher he set back and got the feel of things before he decided to past judgment are input his ideas. After reading his first year I am looking forward to my first day of mind when things don't go as plan to keep going because your the only person that will notice. Mr. McClung last post was the most important to me because I notice the growth. I will always remember to listen to my students because their opinions matter, always find something to challenge me, and work outside of my 8-3 schedule, so that I'm always prepared. McClung has taught me a lot in the two post but most importantly to begin my career ready to advance to better thing in the school system.

Project#14


Thursday, March 29, 2012

c4k#2

World Book Day: Sharing Our Favorite Books

 Class 12 shared their favorite books using an app call audio boo. I copied the links so that I can share with you the talents of class 12.

Betty's favorite book 

Dylan's favorite book

Paige's favorite book

billy the beanMy Comment

Never used Audio boo until now so I decided to comment with a Audio boo on my Favorite book. Thanks for the great idea,  I plan to use this in the my class.
Thanks Cedric Lett
Student at the University of South Alabama in edm310

I enjoyed making my audio boo about my favorite book 


Mrs.Graham, E6 super stars


My name is Cedric Lett a student in EDM310 at the University Of South Alabama. I enjoyed your post on the beans. Your students pictures look great. Planting the beans gave the kids something to look forward to everyday when they get to school. Great job keeping your students engaged.
http://lettcedricedm310.blogspot.com

C4T#3

elmo book bag
I had the pleasure of commenting on one of our lab assistants class blog, Anthony Capps. Mr Capps displayed a lot of great techniques to keep his students engaged in learning. Assignment one was on the Branches of Government. He asked the student to form groups of two are more and explain which branch of government they would be and why. This assignment displayed learning as well as team work, great job Anthony.

Comment2
Assignment two was similar to one but still just as interesting. Each student needed to pick a part of the cell that best matches a description of their personality and tell why. Mr. Capps gave clear directions and opened the students imagination skills. The assignment was a example of not putting  caps on the students creative skills. Overall great class blog. 

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Blog#8

This is how we Dream Part 1&2 by: Dr Miller 



         Dr. Miller created two inspiring videos about where education is and where its about to go. An inter-mental change as he stated, is where we work now with our laptops or desktops. Dr. Miller stated that we don't have to go to libraries any more we have everything at out finger tips right at home or school. He talks about the ability to go to any schools library without having to step foot inside. He talks about all the great things that we can do now with the web and new technology. One thing that stood out to me the most was when he states that we don't have a way to teach what he just talked about because we don't have the resources at this point. Wow! Then he goes on to say we need inspiring teachers, spaces and pedagogues. This type of writing has not been created yet it has to be invented.

           I think  the way teachers are being taught today the schools don't have to fear, because teachers will be ready to step up to the challenge. Our school system is not behind or at a stand still because of the students, as stated in previous post the students are learning more and more at a early age. The current teachers need to get a refresh course on education in the 21 century. I know that was a little off subject but I  was excited through the video till I got to the end. I feel that the students will be ready for anything new and exciting. With all the new games and social networking sites that they use  will be upgraded with the new styles of writing and technology they will be able to teach some of the teachers how to use it.

    I cant say this enough technology is on the move with or without you, so you make the choice. I believe that as a educator you must be able to change with the seasons. I know that teaching is not an easy job but who wants to do something repetitive with no change. I plan to inspire, change and most importantly empower my students to learn. Great video from Dr Miller!


Carly that was very informative, I guess thats why your a lab assistant. Your work defined the kind of teacher that Dr. Miller stated that will inspire students. Carly took a simple assignment and made it her own. The philosophy idea is great. I think that every student/teacher should create a you tube playlist something that you can take along with you on interviews. I talked to a teacher who interviewed for a job in the Mobile School System and she told me that one of the questions they ask was what will set you apart from every other teacher we interviewed?  Knowing the person she was I knew that she had something amazing to say, but she didn't say anything. She pulled out a CD and it was short video of why she wanted to be a teacher, the principle smiled and yes she got the job. So here is my playlist. If you didn't do one, I GOT THAT JOB YOU WANTED. LOL

Blog Post #12

EDM310 for Dummies and The Chipper Series both were great student videos. EDM310 for Dummies was about getting the right tools to get the job done. Everything in life can be hard but if you gather the proper materials it can be a breeze just like in the video. The Chipper Series was looking for short cuts to getting the work done although there may be short cuts you can take you will always miss out on something that can be of an importance to your job. Chipper went back to school because she noticed that although she had great ideas you have to put the time in for anything to be valuable. So in return I think that the two videos give you some simple steps to success. 1. Gather all material needed to complete a task. 2 Apply 3 Believe in hard work. 4 Take the time to do a great job. A video I would like to be a part of is one that allows each student to spend an hour in the classrooms and apply this to C4K some hands on blogging.



This video is an argument that we watch every week in Edm310, it states why are schools left so far behind when it comes to technology, why don't teachers take learning outside of the classroom, why are the schools so afraid of change.Well this is simple because we have teachers so afraid of change. The schools can change and require more from their teachers but without the proper training it still will not change. Going into the schools here in Mobile I hear teachers say,  why do we have to go to these pointless workshops to be more creative. Workshops can't teach me what  four or five years of school did. This is our issue not the students and not the funds. Teaching+inspiring= (what) the choice is yours.















Animoto is a video creating site that allows you to create presentations for family, friends and fun. Animoto lets you combine music pictures and video clips. Animoto simply easy and a great tool to use. This can be used in the classroom as a easy introduction activity for students to create a lasting impression on each other.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Project#10

I am enjoying adding beneficial sites and people to my account. Netvibes will allow you pick a topic of choice an give you information on the topic you chose. I chose Special education and netvibes pulled information from yahoo, google, bing, and twitter that I can add to my PLN. I also added my geography class site.

C4T ASSIGNMENTS#2 Adventures in Pencil Integration

Why Were Your Kids Playing Games? and 10 Points on Pencils

By 

 John is a great teacher who has a passion to push his school to the next level by raising the bar at his school in education. I enjoyed reading his post because they gave my mine something to disgusted. my comments follow!

pencil me in

 

  Hello, my name is Cedric Lett. I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. After reading your post I remember a post I read about keeping your students engaged in learning. The post compared engaging your students to entertaining your student. I believe that your post displays a great use of keeping your students engaged. Rodney Patrick spoke about the phrase "burp back" and easy way to open a students head and fill it up with every thing you know, then give them a test so they can give your knowledge back. I think its a must that we find other ways to teach. I enjoyed reading your post and look forward to reading many more. Here is a link to my class blog please feel free to visit and leave comments if you like.

week 2

 Once again great post and your choice of words was just amazing.Your right why ban cell phones laptops and any other form of technology from the schools, let just teach students how to use these devices correctly. Once again I am a student in edm310 at the University of South Alabama. Please feel free to visit my blog and leave comments if you like.

Thanks Cedric Lett

http://lettcedricedm310.blogspot.com/


 

Blog#7

Networked Student

  In the video Drexler asked the question, Why does the network student need a teacher? The teacher in the video is called a teacher of connectivism. Connectivism is defined by Drexler as learning that is part of a social network by many diverse entities.  In the video you will see a student that collected  information on American Psychology. After collecting the information from his school library, Google Scholer and many other sites the Network Students is ready to create a (PLN) known as a Personal Learning Network. In the PLN he added bookmarks to sites that would be beneficial to his topic of choice. Lastly he creates a blog page to comment and post blogs so that the Network students that follow behind him will have less work to do. 

My Comment and the answer to the question why dose the network students need a teacher?

The answer was simple, to show him how, where and why. You see after watching the video many people would say if he did all this research and found all the information why would he need a teacher. You have to understand where he came up with the vision to create such and idea like the network student.  Many people think just because young students are able to get on facebook and twitter they're able to search credible sites and use this information as a learning tool well if so, congratulation you have a gifted child. In most cases this does not happened. Students need to know where to start and this information comes from a teacher who has tried and tried to come up with a idea to make their students more of a independent learner. Yes I like that term independent learner a lot more then the network student, but that is just my opinion. I think that if we had more teachers like Dr. Strange the United States rank education increase. The video is simply the same argument he voices in his classes lets get away from the burp back education that we   used so many years ago. So my challenge to my readers, if you're going to school to be a teacher or if your currently a teacher  you can either chose to be a thermometer in your class and adjust to the temperature. Are you can be a thermostat and set the temperature in your class and at your school. I am simply saying you can be like all the other teachers at your school and give the same burp back educations or you can train network students and independent learners. The choice is yours! 

So as a Special Education Major  I plan to take something from each of my post and see just how this will work in a special education class. This is the first time I decided to do this so please give me comments, so I can prepare my mind to be a Special Education teacher in the 21st century and develop independent learners or as seen above the Network Student. I think this would be a great idea to introduce in the special educations class room. Although I feel like it will take a lot of work to do with the new way teachers are being trained it can happened. By challenging your students to do more and not giving them limits they will surprise you. Products are already being used in the class such as computer to help them communicate so by  showing them how to search Google as a educational resource on the computer it would definitely be a plus.

 

Welcome to My PLE!  By 7th grade student

(PLE) Personal Learning Environment  Vs (PLN) Personal Learning Network, The major differences is there are no differences a (PLE) is a( PLN) and vise verse.  You can add bookmarks to sites and have email, twitter and facebook access to people that can help you with ideas and answer questions without having to search or look them up.

 

 

 

Friday, March 2, 2012

C4KPost #1

Post By Keller in Mrs. Ripp's Class 

If  I could travel anywhere, I would go to Santa DeCamastra, Sicily. It is in Italy. My great grandparents came to America from there. My parents went there before I was born with my aunts and uncles. My grandma and grandpa went to. They said that it was fun and showed me some pictures. It was beautiful. The oceans were a deep rich blue. The tiled buildings were beautiful. I still have family that owns a tile shop there. I think it would be fum to see them. I would want to see my great great grandpas grave and see the tiles he made. Well thats my deram vacation. Whats yours?

My Comment

Hi Keller,

My name is Cedric Lett. A student at the University of South Alabama.You have a lot to look forward to in Italy. I hope you go visit soon. I really enjoyed reading your blog about your dream vacation. Paris has always been my dream vacation. One reason is that I have always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. My aunt vacations there once every two years. She always sends me post cards.

keep up the good work!

Cedric Lett #edm310 Student



My Black Belt Test! By Adia's

I had my black belt test on November 19th and 20th. The test is two days, on a Saturday and Sunday.

First, my teachers tested me on my curriculum (all my kicks and punches from white belt to the belt before black belt).


At that time while I was working my butt off to earn my black belt, take a look at what my mischevious little brother was doing, decorating his body, including his tongue and shoe with bright red stamps.



Then I got tested on all of my curriculum's self defense combinations (my curriculum was to do all of the self defense combinations I learned so far). Self defense combinations are meant to teach you how to defend yourself if someone were to attack you. In all, all of the self defense combinations that I had to memorize add up to a total of nineteen combinations.

Next, I had board breaking, which is breaking twelve thick wooden boards with kicks and punches. I had a difficult time with one of the kicks, but I eventually broke the board.



Thereafter was sparring. Sparring is fighting with, I have to admit, not the most comfortable gear on with other people. Since at this particular black belt test there was only one person testing, ten people signed up to spar, and after that I was exhausted, though I was not finished yet.



After, there was grappling. Grappling is pretty much wrestling, but not that hard. Here I had to grapple fourteen different people. If the person signing up to spar and grapple with someone during their black belt test is not yet a black belt, when it is their turn to have their black belt test, it is a black belt's responsibility to support them and spar and grapple with them.



The last thing to do that day was to say an inspirational speech about a person or people who motivate(s) you.

The next day on Sunday was to do a five mile run from my karate studio to the closest high school, do five laps around their track, twelve sprints (races) around it, and to run back. My feet grew very tired and sore for days after, but it was worth it because I earned my well-deserved black belt.





Have you ever earned a black belt? 


If so, what were the steps you had to take to earn it?


Do you do karate, and are you on a goal to earn your black belt?


If you do not do karate, what, from the pictures, looked like the most interesting thing to do? If so, why?
 Our basketball team has went 10-3 this season. Last week we won our tournament. We one all of the games and we played Alta,Royal,Okoboji, and Ruthven. I think the closest game was when we played Alta but I don’t the ink it was that close. We beat them the week before because of a game winning shot. We got Metals for winning tournament. I was really happy . I think we lost to St.Mary’s one time and then we one the other time. We lost to other teams but I was not their because I had to go to a cattle show. We beat one team by a lot that was my best game. I had thirty points and hunter had a lot to. I think we do our best down low in the paint. We had two teams every game. So if one team got tired then the other team would come in the paint. I think that we have a lot of tall players so we can get lay ups really easy. Like Logan, Ben, preston, Manuel,  Colton, Jayden, and me. Blake ethan brandon and hunter are outside shooters. I could out of two games for rejecting  people. I think our basketball team is really good. The End!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 My Comment
Cedric Lett
Hey Jake

My name is Cedric L Lett an Edm310 student at the University of South Alabama. I enjoyed reading your post about your basketball games. I did not play basketball in school. I played football. One thing that I learned playing sports is that teamwork wins games. Keep up the good work. I have added a link to my blog,feel free to read and comment if you like.

http://lettcedricedm310blogspot.com/

Cedric L Lett
EDM310

I enjoyed getting to know Adia, Jake and Keller by reading their blogs. Jake enjoyed playing basketball. Adia was a black belt in karate. Keller made plans to go to Italy.

A Sixth Grader Demonstrates Why You Do Videos in EDM310

  Special Comment For Kids Assignment Posted on Class Blog On Tuesday, February 7,2012.

 Cedric Lett on said:

Great Job Lauren! I was blown away by your video. The video not only showed that your creative but that you have a passion to do good work. The end when you talk about losing weight had me laughing so hard my mom had to come see what was so funny. Great video and keep up the hard work.
Cedric Lett EDM310 Student at the University of South Alabama
Here is the link to my Blog: http://lettcedricedm310.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

Blog6




Professor Randy Pausch sunrise October 26,1960 and his sunset July 25,2008. Randy gave his last lecture on September 18, 2007 at the Carnegie Mellow University auditorium. The lecture was originally called "The Last lecture" now called "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". In this lecture Randy talked about three main points, his childhood dreams some of which included: playing in the NFL, being Captain Kirk, and winning stuffed animals. His second point was enabling  the dreams of others. He ended with Lessons learned. In the following you see some main points and techniques that I pulled from his lecture. Keep in mind  the lecture is an hour long, and I can write forever about some of the topics. I will try to keep it short!

My Comments

Randy Pausch lecture made me laugh,cry but most importantly think. Pausch sounded a lot like my dad, who passed last year. My dad always told me never give up,and through the entire lecture those words were in the back of my head. In the being of the lecture he talked about his childhood dreams. Dreams,where do I start, Randy talked about dreams because that is where most of your goals and accomplishments start. Its very important as teacher  to help students understands the importance of  dreams and to make reference to people who had a dream like Randy Pausch and Dr Martin Luther King. This will help students understand that dreams come true.

Enabling the dreams of others is the second topic of the lecture. We must remember that as educators it is our job to teach others how to accomplish there dreams. The best thing about this is that if teaching is your  passions by helping others you will be accomplishing apart of your dreams. Randy helped many people in his path to success, he stated "that you cant get there alone". As teachers, mentors, and parents we must help our students,children,and friends to stay focused and never lose site of there dreams. The last topic and what I think is the most important, is lessons learned. Life can be the best teacher and if we learn the lessons  life teaches you, then this is called a lesson learned. As teachers we will try many different assignments,techniques approaches to get students to learn, and if you pass or fail that will be something you learned. Learning as well be important as a teacher. Remember as a teacher learning will be a never ending process for you to be prepared to ask questions, your never to smart to learn.

As a educator I plan to inspire students to dream just like Randy Pausch has inspired many people today. I also believe that if you push a student to greatness he or she will thank you in the end. This was a great lecture.