Kristina Weaver EDM 510

Post 1: On my first Comments for Kids, I had Tyra D. from Mrs. Well's 4th grade class in Kansas. Tyra talked about how much she loved writing fiction stories. She said she enjoyed them because they would be about anything in the world. When commenting on her blog, I said how I also enjoyed writing fiction stories when I was younger because I could make them be about anything I wanted. Post 2: This week I have William from Mrs. Leatherwood's 8th grade Language Arts class. William's blog talked about all the interesting places there are to visit in Orlando, Florida. He said his favorite place to visit was Universal Studios because of all the thrill rides. I commented on his blog by saying that I love the city of Orlando. I also told him that my favorite place to visit in Orlando is Disney World. I recommended Downtown Disney, too because of the wonderful places to eat and the attractions.  Post 3: This week, I read Dylan's blog . He talked about a book he read cal...

iMovie and the Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten I learned that kindergarten classes in Fairhope and Gulf Shore elementary classrooms are using iPads to create book trailers using iMovie. These children definitely know more about iMovie than I do. They are doing this on a daily basis and use iMovie in their centers. The kids are looking forward to editing each others book trailers and watch them. The Alabama Virtual Library (AVL) is also being used on a daily basis in these classrooms. The AVL is a free online encyclopedia filtered for the age of the students. Students are assigned keywords to look up every week and are getting practice by doing this research. We All Become Learners In this video, Mrs. Bennett speaks about how everyone in the classroom becomes a learner, not just the students. She gave the example of how she teaches in early morning library class and will learn something new about the technology. She then teaches the students in that class what she learned an...

I learned that Anthony Capps is a third grade teacher in Baldwin County at Gulf Shores Elementary School. Mr. Capps and Dr. Strange talk about a lot of different technologies that are available and used in Baldwin County. One thing they talk about was project-based learning. I would love to use project-based learning in my classroom because it will allow for the students to become more engaged in what they are doing. It also gives the students a chance to broaden their learning capabilities. Another thing Mr. Capps and Dr. Strange talked about was iCurio. iCurio is a filtered web browser that bring up safe websites for children to browse through. I think this is a wonder thing to use in the classroom. By using iCurio, you would not have to wonder what your students are looking at on the internet or monitor them. This would simply cover it for you. Dr. Strange also said that it is important to be a learner if you are to be a teacher. I agree with this statement because everything around...

I had never heard of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) before this class. I think that PLNs are a wonderful, smart way to help build your resources. With a PLN, you can have access to a variety of people and websites when you may need help with something. As teachers, this is a wonderful opportunity to ask other colleagues for help or their input. You could even use this tool for classroom decorating ideas. Social media also plays a big part in PLNs. Using Facebook and Twitter can help build up your database just by using a simple hashtag. I plan on keeping in touch with many of my former high school teachers to start building my PLN. I also plan on following many professors and educators on Twitter. That way I could use a hashtag to search any problems or questions I may come upon. A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment

 In the video Asking Better Questions in the Classroom , Joanne Chesley talks about two kinds of questions that are asked: close-ended questions and open-ended questions. A closed-ended question allows for a one word or short phrase response from the student. An open-ended question allows for a longer response and more details from the student. An example would be, "What were the reasons for the start of World War I?" Asking a question that will call for an explanation will allow the students to engage more in their learning. An effective teacher should always use this tactic when asking questions. This will allow her to see the depth at which her students learn, study, and pay attention. It will also challenge the students to know the answers and become more engaged.

1. Ask  - "Our mission is to get our millions of users across the globe the answers they need. We've been in the Q&A business for more than 17 years, and although Jeeves has since retired, we carry on his passion for serving our 100 million users with answers they can trust." Ask is similar to Google and Bing. You can “ask” them anything and they will give you a precise answer. 2. Ixquick  - "Ixquick is the worlds most powerful search engine employing the most advanced metasearch technology." Ixquick is known for its extreme privacy. It includes advanced search, global search and power refinement. 3. Dogpile  - "InfoSpace metasearch engine offering search of the general web, or image, audio, video, and news. Also offers search of Yellowpages and Whitepages." Dogpile is a time saving search engine. It returns all the best results from other search engines including Google and Yahoo.  4.  Yahoo  - "Yahoo is focused ...

Post 1:  Family Literacy Day Ms. Cassidy's school hosted a day where the parents came in and had breakfast made by the administration with their kids. After some delicious pancakes, the kids read books to their parents. She posted some pictures of the children reading to their parents. When leaving my comment, I said how how wonderful it was to promote reading with parents and a pancake breakfast. I also said that I would love to do that in my classroom one day and get the whole school involved. Post 2: The Winter Carnival In Ms. Cassidy's recent blog post, she spoke about  a Winter Carnival at her school. Children were put in multi grade teams and were sent around to 8 different stations. She was in charge of the "Decorate a Cupcake to Look Like a Snowman Station." She posted pictures of different children decorating and eating their cupcakes. I commented on this post by saying I thought it was a great idea to put the kids in multi grade teams. By doing tha...