Additional Post #1

I will start by answering the question of why I didn't get the metaphor in Don't Let them take the Pencils Home. I go back and I replace technology in the place of it and I can do nothing but laugh at myself. The problem that I encounter with college at times is that I take it too seriously. Now I am not saying that students should treat their future lightly. My suggestion is to remember why we are here. Teaching is one of the few careers that to me is very inspiring and it takes a special person to be an educator. We obviously don't do it for the money!! We do it because we want to not only teach them but we want to change their lives for the better. I tell my wife all the time that if I can change the path of just one student and see them succeed because I showed them that I cared, then I have accomplished more than any business executive could ever do. So I say that in the future just relax a little bit and look for the meaning in some of these blog post assignments!!

Here are a list of some of the metaphors I have written down:
Life is a roller coaster.
It's hotter than hades.
You're about as sharp as a beach ball.
I'm mad as a bull
Run like the wind
slept like a baby

I think as an educator that metaphors are a great way to communicate with students. Everybody has a different way of learning and metaphors are a tool that we use to get our point across not only in the classroom but in everyday situations. Also, as mentioned in Jennifer asked: Why use Metaphors, metaphors are sometimes a great way to talk about difficult topics. For example, it is much easier to use the Boy Who Cried Wolf as a way to explain why lying is bad than to tell someone that lying is bad without understanding the consequences in a way that they understand. It is amazing how much we use metaphors in the English language!

Blog Assignment #13

So I decided I would try my hand at this technology fast for a day. I decided Friday would be the day. Now why would anybody in their right mind choose Friday of all days to try and not use technology. Let me explain the method to my madness. I was excused from PT with ROTC that morning; so that meant that I didn't have to use my phone to get up at 4:30. I could have my wife wake me up in time for me to leave for school at 8. Second, I didn't have to work that night and that meant no using the touch screens at work to ring in the customers orders. I also had a 400+ page book that I needed to read for my history class. This seemed like the perfect storm and a great opportunity to not use any form of technology till Saturday. Well, in the words of Lee Corso on ESPN, "Not so fast my friend!"

One thing that I have learned is that my cell phone is a direct extension of me. When you have kids and a wife that need to be able to get in touch with you at a moments notice, it becomes nearly impossible to not use it. It's funny because I never had a cell phone until I was 19 years old. I made it 19 years without a phone and yet I am struggling for cell phone sobriety for 24 hours. The point is that I made it to about 1:30 in the afternoon before my wife was calling one of my friends that I was going to school with to get in touch with me. She needed me to pick up my son by 3:00 who was sick at school. 13 1/2 hours until my first violation. I would say that is a win. Unfortunately, it would not be my last violation.

I go to my last class 5 minutes later and I am informed that I have an assignment due by midnight that night that involves going online and watching a video and taking a test on it. I'm thinking to myself that maybe I can get a pass for this unnecessary violation. I mean school should count as a pass for this technology fasting. But a person of integrity like myself decides that I am simply making excuses and will have to fess up to my breaking the rules. Needless to say that by 6:00 p.m. that night I had now used a cell phone and a computer on my mecca to no technology land. I was down in the dumps but feeling that 6 more hours could be reached. Focus Owen. You are almost there!!!!

So I get engulfed in my book and I am getting to about 10:00 p.m. that night when I make my last and fatal error with my assignment. I reach over to my ipod, turn on some nice tunes at a low volume so that I can have a little background while reading a great book on the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain. My wife walks in and says, "What are you doing?" I simply reply that I am turning on something to help me relax and focus on my book. "Well, aren't you breaking the rules?" I look at her dumbfounded and all I can mutter is, "Guilty as charged." This technology thing is pretty darn important and it is nearly impossible to function without it.

The conclusion I have of my study is that the world has become dependent on the use of computers, cell phones, and IPods. Yet, many educators feel that technology is EVIL and UNNECESSARY in the classroom. This is the same people that get on their phone on their break and plan their weekend, order supplies, and then respond to emails from concerned parents about the conduct of their child. I truly believe that computers and technology in general are enhancing our world and we have become a much more accessible community because of the speed of information. I remember trying to call my friends and if they weren't home you simply called someone else to see what they were doing. Imagine if high school students had to actually drive around to get in touch with someone. I won't even get into life without text messages, facebook, or twitter. In fact, the creator of Facebook is the youngest billionaire in the world. Isn't that amazing? One of the richest people in the world made his fortune making it easier for people to gossip. That is truly a significant realization that technology has become the utmost of importance in our daily lives!!!

Final Project

Project #14 Skype Interview

C4K #11 Special Assignment

I have spent the last four hours just getting engulfed in Mrs. Yollis' classroom blog. What an incredible amount of resources at the fingertips of those very lucky 3rd graders as well as for their parents!! I tried to read as much as I could about who Mrs. Yollis is and what she is trying to produce to her students, parents, and visitors like me on the internet. I would say that what I read about her is pretty impressive. She has traveled to places like Bali and fished in the Arctic Circle. She has also been to the headquarters for Google and left a link to her blog on the results of the conference. I would say that she is a very passionate person who genuinely cares about the success of her students.

Another great part of this site that I really enjoyed were all the tools that are provided for the parents. She gives a ton of tutorials that can help the parents understand what their kids are doing and it also gives them the tools to actually help their kids with their assignments. One of the biggest excuses that a lot of parents use today are they don't know how to do the homework. So they feel that they are not help and tend to bow out as a support for their kids. Well, not with Mrs. Yollis' students parents. There are links like How to talk to your Child and 8 Back to School Goals for Parents that really educate the parents and give them great tools on the approach they should take with expectations and skills they they can learn to help their children be more successful!

I also really enjoyed the different blogs that the students are working on! They are working on a blog called Yollis' 365 Project in which each student is assigned to put a picture up for that particular day and write what the meaning of the picture is and why they are using it. I have seen some really great post. The one I was assigned to what from day 283 and it was about a fall festival and the origins of Halloween. There are many other blogs that the students are involved in. Mrs. Yollis' 3rd grade class is involved in a collaborative project called Our World Our Stories and it involves classes from all six continents who blog about different things about where they are from. This involves hobbies, food, etc. The great thing is it opens up communication between these different cultures and they each share their experiences so that the students are learning about the other classes. I am really excited about this and have added it to my PLN!!

I really enjoyed this assignment and I would like to thank Mrs. Yollis for being such an incredible inspiration. I have got so many ideas that I took from her that I will implement into my curriculum if I am lucky enough to have an administrator that is as open as hers is to utilize the tools that technology has supplied to us!!!

Blog Assignment #12

Watch the video on The Classroom of the Futureand write at least two paragraphs about what you thought of the video. Do you agree that this is the future of education or do you have a different idea of what the future holds for education?

After watching the video, I came away with two very important points about the video. The first is that the idea of computers at every desk shouldn't be such an unrealistic goal. I have two children who are in public schools and they give us a list of items that usually costs about $100-150 for supplies such as paper, pencils, and other unnecessary supplies that would be obsolete with the use of computers. As affordable as computers are becoming, the idea of a computer for every student should be happening!! Especially when you consider the price breaks that companies like DELL and Gateway give when you buy multiple systems. When you go to college, one of the requirements is that you own a computer. Why is this not being adapted at every level of education. I know that the lower income areas will struggle with this; but, think about how the money that goes into useless supplies could easily pay for a computer for every student.

The second key point I took away from the video is that computers and technology have become a vital part of our society. We are holding back the youth by not implementing this into the curriculum!! People think that I will never use a computer in my job. My answer to that is WAKE UP!!! Even fast food restaurants are becoming much more technologically advanced and it won't be long before even this low paying jobs will require some computer experience to get hired. The world is changing and evolving at a really incredibly fast rate. Educators and administrators need to make it a priority to change the way we do education and teach or we will fall behind in the global race with countries such as China and Japan!

Final Project Update

Our final project will include Mary LaCoste, Angela Pitts, and Owen Gill, and we will be doing our final reflection on the ups and downs of EDM 310. We plan on utilizing the green screen to enhance the effect with some really cool videos and pictures of software programs we have utilized throughout the semester. We don't want to give too much away because we don't want our idea to be hijacked due to its awesome originality!! Stay tuned for more details!!

Blog Assignment 11

After watching Ms. Cassidy's videoon blogging and then watching her Skype video, I have so much to learn and now have so many more great ideas I can use when I become a teacher myself.

First of all, I loved how she used the wiki pictures as links to material the students can use to learn about what is going on in the curriculum. This answers the much sought after question of monitoring the access of students on the internet. Taking the time to create links to helpful sites will eliminate the temptation for the students to go off course with their internet browsing. It is such a simple but brilliant idea and I can't believe that I didn't think of that. My reasoning would be that I am still very unfamiliar with using the wiki as a tool.

That of course leads me into the second thing I took from her philosophy. That is the idea that I need to learn as much as possible now; because once I become a teacher, the free time that I have will be significantly reduced because of the demands of the state in keeping on pace with the curriculum. This is the time for all of us that strive to be technologically literate teachers to expand and grow so that we are more prepared for the new generation of student. I absolutely love her enthusiasm and honesty when it comes to teaching and it was really informative. She mentioned the fact of having a technology coordinator as a go between with the administration and the teachers. My question to that would be do we have a coordinator designated in every school system or is that on a county by county basis? I would love to find out and I am going to ask some of the teachers in my daughters school if they have someone like that to help facilitate the needed resources to make the classes more technology friendly!

C4K Summary Post for October

My first comment for October was for a class blog called We are Kids with a View. This is a class that is comprised of 1st grade students. They are located in New Zealand. This is the class that did the survey on the design of the New Zealand flag. I am assigned to comment on a particular student by the name of Rohan. He mentions that he is working on subtraction with numbers up to 20. An interesting fact I gave him about the U.S. was a geography fact that the state of Alabama is located on the Gulf of Mexico. I figured he would like to know exactly where the person from the other side of the world that is commenting on his page is located. Visualization has always been a good first step for me!

My second assignment for C4K was for Ms. Gregory's 6th grade class. I was assigned to comment on two students from this class. The first student was Nate. He was the student I had from my list. I wrote on his blog about sports and enjoying the hobbies that make us all happy. My second comment was from the random slot machine that is on the site. The student that I "won" was named Anthony. He was blogging about his science class on density and talking about a project where he would figure out the amount of seconds it takes for the earth to rotate once. I asked him to elaborate on how to do the project and will look for his reply.

My third assignment for C4K was for Hailey"s blog in an 8th grade class. She does a post describing her in a soccer game where she is about to score a goal. The detail was really amazing and it made me feel like I was actually in the game. This is some of the best descriptive detail I have ever seen a student at this level give! It makes me realize how amazingly talented some of these students really are!!

My fourth assignment was to comment on a student from Classroom 9 in Miss Priscilla Lavaculla's class. I ended up commenting on PJ's Australian animation blog post. It was a short animation of animals in the Australian outback. I gave him high praise for his effort and put a link to follow the progress of this class. Really great videos are being done in this class. What a great way to get students involved in history and other aspects of their subject requirements!!

My final comment from this month covers a blog that I am very excited to read. It is a blog for history students that do various projects on topics from different periods in history. The one that I was assigned to focus on is called anticipation of the projetand it is written by a student in Miss Gwaltney's 10-12 grade history class in Portland, Oregon. This student did a blog reflecting on their project about the Ottoman Empire and how he went about doing the work. There is mentions of using various sources as well as his love for having the freedom to choose his topic from a particular era in history. I commented on my agreement that students deserve to have some control over what they learn based on their interest and that we all could benefit from this form of education. I am adding this blog to my PLN. Excited for the possibilities of how my future class is going to be conducted!!!