Sampson/WhenIBecomeATeacher

WebQuest

Below is a link to my first ever webquest:
https://sites.google.com/site/sampsonquest/home

Week 13 WebQuests

1. Our group decided that the best 2 webquests were: the underground railroad and the ice cream webquests. We chose these 2 because they scored high in all 4 categories. They were very well organized, easy to follow, and seemed fun.
2. We chose that the ancient egypy webquest and the where is my hero webquest were the worst ones. They did not have as much information and did not grab our attention as well as the others.
3. If something is the best it means that nothing else is as good as it in that category or grouping. If it is the worst, it means that it is not as good as anything else in that category or grouping. Sometimes something can be the best at one thing or in one group but the worst at another thing or in another group.

Top Ten Video Questions

-Does this activity differ from much of the activities you engaged during your K-12 education? How? or How not? Give examples.
--The activity shown was both different and similar to some activities I did in my K-12 education. It was different in that we did not use computers and technology to the extent that they did. It was similar because they were learning about animals and ranking them which my class did sometimes, but all of our information came from a monthly magazine our class got instead of on the computer.

-Is your learning style addressed in this activity? How? Give me an example.
--Yes, I learn best by seeing an example and doing it myself. In this activity the kids were able to see other sites and make one of their own.

-This project was implemented without the use of textbooks. Are you surprised? Are you interested in teaching in a similar way when you become a teacher?
-- I am a little surprised that they did not use a textbook but I believe these types of activities don't need a textbook and are very beneficial. When I am a teacher I would like to do activities that don't involve the textbook as well to keep the kids more hands on.

-What are your concerns and what do you anticipate as being barriers?
-- No major problems really jump out at me but I think it would be important to check with the school principal about such an activity since it does not use a textbook and takes alot of time to complete.

WebQuest Evaluation

My role was to be the "technophile" and rate the strengths and weaknesses of each site. Here is a picture of how I rated each site.

As a group we chose the Underground Railroad WebQuest to be the best one of the choices because it was well rounded in each topic.

Blogging Questions

1. I think using blogs is a fun and useful tool for this class. It is a good way to get everyone's opinion on things we are doing in class while incorporating technology. Keeping a blog also gives us a place to come back to and remember how to use certain tools we have learned in this class and our opinions of the tools.

2. Keeping a blog makes you a more effective teacher in many ways. First, it allows you to connect with your students on a level they are more comfortable and think is "cool". Second, it allows you to reflect on your class activities and receive feedback from you students and/or other teachers.

3. Yes, I will consider to continue to post to my blog even when this class is over because it is an easy, cheap way to connect with other teachers and learn new activities to incorporate in classroom. My posts could also be helpful to someone else.

4. By blogging I was able to use collective intelligence. I was able to provide feedback to others and receive feedback from them as well.

Wikipedia Questions and Worksheet

A.What is Wikipedia? A web based encyclopedia.
B.How would you answer the question in this piece, how reliable can a source be when anyone can edit it? You should know a little bit on your own and you can use the references listed to double check the credibility.
C.Who do the creators trust when it comes to weeding out misinformation? The users of the website.
D.Why did founder Larry Sanger leave Wikipedia? He said he wanted to give the authority to the "experts".
E.What would abuse or vandalism look like on a wikipedia page? It would be hard to notice at first glance, but when the information is really off you would be able to tell.
F.What do the statistics in the third paragraph of this piece reveal? Wikipedia is growing at a fast pace.
G.Why do you think wikipedia is so successful? When people want to get information they want it as fast as possible. Wikipedia provides information in an easy to read, easy to find manner.
H.Why might Wikipedia's creators not want to accept advertising? They are doing really well without it financially. As the saying goes: "if its not broke, don't fix it."
I.How does wikiscanner help increase the reliability of wikipedia entries? The authors can remain anonymous.

BackChannel !!

Website Evaluation

I learned what to look for on a website to verify its credibility. I also learned what the ".com .org" etc. means at the end of URL. The internet is full of information but not all of it is correct. This lesson helped me to figure out the best ways to find out what information is worth using or correct and what is not. I think it will help me in my future classes.

Oct. 21 Assignment

My graph shows that the Asians, Blacks, Females, and Hispanics got better in level two than the ones in the first series. The values then start to vary and there is no clear difference to prove one group did better than another. The Special Ed. students did much better than the other students in series 8.

Teaching Philosophy Voki

Journal Post #7

Quote: "Media literacy in the past tended to focus on alerting students to stereotypes, advertising, and propaganda and on protecting them from undesirable influences. Today's digital media literacy encompasses many additional topics, from using search engines, to creating Web sites and online profiles, to participating in social networking. One of the most basic strands of media literacy emphasizes the skills and knowledge students need to locate and critically assess online content."

Reaction:  This quote says alot to me about how society works and is changing.  When I read this quote I looked up some media literacy from years ago and then compared it to recent media literacy.  I was able to notice a huge difference and it proved this quote to be correct.  To think about what to use in media literacy to cause a person to think or feel a certain way is a complicated and complex process.  To see that people are now able to make media literacy that actually forces people to think and sometimes even learn is quite impressive to me.

Sources: David, Jane L. "Educational Leadership:Literacy 2.0:Teaching Media Literacy." Membership, Policy, and Professional Development for Educators – ASCD. 2011. Web. 07 Oct.

cmlassignmentuon.blogspot.com/
Related Picture

Seven Power Lens Media Literacy

Quote: "For this particular speech, President Bush and his staff decided to position his podium in front of a painting of Teddy Roosevelt."

Reaction:  This quote, and really this entire article, really taught me alot about how much work goes into one media image.  The media wants the audience to preceive something a certain way and they set up the entire picture to help form that perception.  Even the smallest little details of a picture that most people wouldn't even notice and/or understand are put into the picture for a reason.  From now on when I look at media image I will try to notice every detail and ask myself why they chose this picture and set it up the way they did.  This article taught me alot  and I will look at media images differently now and try to pay more attention to the details. 

Related Image:

Sources: http://www.masternewmedia.org/
Abilock, D. (2002 April 21) Seven Power Lenses.https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B6DFAmexYq7vMTFmZjZhNWItZWY5Ni00NzdhLWIxYzItMmE4NmI0MGI5NzJl&hl=en

Critically Speaking Activity

this picture to me gives me more confidence in President Obama because it shows he was faced with a difficult task and is walking away from it with a plan that he has confidence in.

People	Objects	Activities
Person in Green Shirt looks Happy	Crane in background	Walking and talking.
Man in uniform looks interested in whats being said.	alot of people in background.	walking and talking.
Guy in post looking out to sea.	binoculars and amercan flag.	Looking out.
another person looking out to sea.	binoculars, control panel.	watching guard.

1.  They have devised a plan to fix the oil spill problem.
       They are confident in the plan.
     They are ready to get started on the work.
2.  What kind of plan does he have in mind?

People	Objects	Activities
Obama looks disappointed.	there are books in the background.	He is thinking.
Obama looks like he is in deep thought.	it looks like he may be in an office.	He wants to give an answer.
Obama looks like he wants to say something serious.	his shirt being unbuttoned at the top shows he was somewhat relaxed.	He was asked a serious question.
Obama is casually dressed.		He was reading or writing.

1.  Obama has just received bad news.
     Obama was just asked a serious question.
     Obama just read something that upset him.
2.  How does he feel about the progress that is being made in the oil spill clean up?

Digital Story Project Discussion

Digital story telling is a great way for students to show what they have learned in a very creative way.  Using the digital story telling tools is fun and easy for students.  It allows them to think more outside of the box in their story telling than they would if they were just writing a paper.  I think that more classes should use digital story telling to keep up with the technology tools that are allowing education to continue to be me advanced and fun for the students.


http://img.skitch.com/20090227-gx95bn841jbgpdp24xyuferbfc.png

Fair Use

"Students may use portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works in their academic multimedia projects, with proper credit and citations."

I think that the copy right laws are fair.  It allows for students, teachers, or anyone else to use other peoples work to help benefit themselves or teach others, while still giving credit to the person who first did the work.  Students are able to upload videos to youtube.  There are limitations to the amount of pictures and length of music or video that can be used in a multimedia project.  You should ask for permission to use someone elses work or you can give them their credit by using the proper format in a works cited page.
Source: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/copyright1.html


Source: http://www.bluebullets.net/html/assets/images/Word_Lyric_Works_Cited.jpg

digital story telling

Quote: 
"Creating a digital story taps skills and talents- in art, media production, storytelling, project development, and so on- that might otherwise lie dormant within many students but will serve them well in school, at work, and in expressing themselves personally..." 
(Ohler, December, 2005).

Reaction:
I think that digital storytelling would be really fun for the students.  It allows them to be very creative and express their story in a more personal way than just typing a paper.  I think that the students would really connect better to the material as well because they would be putting their thoughts into more than just words.  Technology continues to grow and this is a cool tool that will allow education to keep up with the technology changes. 

References: Ohler, Jason (2005, December). The World of Digital Storytelling.  Retrieved from

     http://www.jasonohler.com/pdfs/digitalStorytellingArticle1-2006.pdf:

 

http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org/files/2009/11/photostory11.jpg

 

Photo Story

Comix !!

The Key Solution

Quote:
"And so it is rather bizarre that the first widespread change in how people spell English words appears to have come from a group of (largely) young people sending text messages to one another with cellular phones and other electronic devices" (Ammon Shea).

Reaction:
In the article it said that many very important people such as presidents and others have had no success in changing the english language and how words are spelled.  Well, knowing this makes this quote seem more realistic to me.  When kids and young adults are texting they don't care what is correct or incorrect spelling as long as it is understandable.  The other key aspect is how fast they can get their message across which makes abbreviations and shortened mispelled words very common in text messages.  This change in how people spell is in large part to the fact that it is such a large group that just really doesn't care what the people in charge of the english language and spelling have to say.  If this group continues to grow, then who knows, it might spread all the way up the chain of command and these changes in spelling could become accepted into the english language.

Here is a cartoon of a tachers teaching a class some abbreviations commonly used in text messages.

References:
http://www.cartoonstock.com/
Ammon Shea, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magazine/24FOB-onlanguage-t.html.

Learning Style

According to the learning test I learn best by listening and being able to ask questions.  My second highest score was kinesthetic.  I agree with the test that those are the styles of learning that are best for me.  I like the discussion style of learning because it allows me to ask questions and get immediate feedback.  I think learning by doing is also very effective. 

Wordle/Poll Everywhere

Wordle is a program that students and/or teachers can use to incoorperate technology and creativity in the classroom.  It puts a group of words together that you enter and makes the words you used more often bigger and more noticable than the words that were used less often.  It helps create a picture that students can use as a visual tool for learning.  Poll everywhere is a fun and easy to use educational tool as well.  It allows you to post a poll and have students or classmates answer your poll either on the website or through text messaging.  It allows your class to share their opinions on multiple subjects and for the classmates to learn about eachother.  Both of these tools, along with ISTE are helping teachers to find fun, creative ways to improve the use of technology in the classroom. 

Digital Media Changing Language

Quote:

"Are instant messaging and text messaging killing language? To hear what the popular media say, a handful of OMGs (oh my god) and smiley faces, along with a paucity of capital letters and punctuation marks, might be bringing English to its knees." (Lenhart, Smith, and Macgill 2008)

Reaction:

I think that digital media is definitely changing our language, but it is in a good way.  A big part of communicating is how the message is perceived by the listener.  In person it is easy to take the message the way it was intended because you can hear the person's tone and use their body language to help you too.  In a text message or email it is sometimes hard to know if a person is happy, mad, upset, joking, or being sarcastic.  Using "text lingo" helps solve this problem.  People are able to add a :) or many other types of faces.  Although "LOL" means laughing out loud it can be added to the beginning or end of a text message to let the receiver know that this message wasn't meant to be very serious or demanding.  The easier it is for people to communicate quickly and effectively the better it is for our language.

Picture of some "text lingo" written out

References: Baron, Naomi. (2009, March). are digital media changing language.Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar09/vol66/num06/Are-Digital-Media-Changing-Language%C2%A2.aspx

Type of Teacher

Color Poll Results

My poll

Click here to access my poll: 

Writers Block

Quote:
"Ms. Davidson herself was appalled not long ago when her students at Duke, who produced witty and incisive blogs for their peers, turned in disgraceful, unpublishable term papers." (Heffernon, August 7, 2011).

Reaction:
This quote stuck out to me because I felt as if I could really relate to it.  When I am talking to friend or telling a story, whether it is in person, over the phone, texting, or emailing I have no problem communicating the message I want to get across.  On the other hand, when I am trying to write a term paper, getting my point across becomes much more difficult.  I think that more assignments should be more like "free writing" than giving it an intimidating title such as "term paper."  This would help students to relax and maybe even enjoy writing when it is assigned.

Reference:

Heffernan, V. (2011, August 7). Education needs a digital upgrade. Retrieved from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/education-needs-a-digital-age-upgrade/?hp

 

Related Source:

Below is a link to an article further explaining what Virginia Heffernan believes and is trying to explain to students, parents and teachers. 

http://www.thelavinagency.com/blog-virginia-heffernan-digital-education-speaker-schools-upgrade.html