My EDM 310 Blog Assignments are Now Complete

I have thoroughly enjoyed this course with every fellow classmate. The atmosphere was sweet; everyone interacted well with each other and I was introduced to some new faces I have never seen before. To name a few, Karen Schotta, Lynda Rigsby, Joyce Fisck and Jessica Kiser. I appreciate all of you for your kind words of encouragement and helping me with questions in class and at home. I wish the best for every student in the class and continue your dreams and stay on course no matter how hard it gets. I am presently in the school system and it can be delightful and challenging. Please, remember to keep the children as your focus and reason for teaching; teaching is a mission not a job. If possible, try to establish a good relationship with the parents and do not criticize the child for what the parents don't do. I believe you all will do very well in the classroom. Have a peaceful and great summer!!!!

Things I learned in EDM 310

When I first entered this computer class, I had fears because I did not know what to expect. I had some knowledge of Word Processor, but not enough to say I was a computer wizard. I felt that everybody in the class was ahead of me in technology. But, as time went on, I have been exposed to some great things. First of all, I appreciate Ms. J. Averitt for her patients; she answered my e-mails and help me with difficult problems that seem like a mountain to me. I know that she is just starting out in her profession, but the methods and techniques she uses went across in a professional manner. I learned how to create, edit, post, and comment on blogs. I learned how to do PowerPoint,Excel, podcasting ( I love doing podcasting), and iGoogle Homepage. I really don't feel comfortable with g-mail; I need to familiarize myself with it more. I believe once I do that it is going to be a cool tool to utilize. Also, I learned how to add links and images, and make all images ADA accessible on the blog posts. I presently work in the Mobile County Public School System and hopefully, I will have my iGoogle Homepage set up in my intervention class as an extra resource.

Project 7: Access Lab Visit

ACCESS Distance Learning is an education initiative of the Alabama Department of Education. It provides opportunities and options for Alabama Public High School students to engage in Advanced Placement (AP), elective, and other courses to which they may not other wise have access. This information can be found at http://accessdl.state.al.us/showaccess.php?lnk=aboutaccess. All of the Mobile County Public High Schools should have an access or distance learning lab. I was referred to Mary G. Montgomery High School located in Semmes, Al. I was not disappointed.

Mr. Roger Rose is the ACCESS Instructor and Director of the ACCESS/Distance learning Lab at MGM. They have five teachers and subjects that are taught through this lab. The courses are as follows: German, Web Design, Advance Psychology, Psychics, and Chemistry. Mr. Rose teaches Advance Psychology and he has been teaching in the school system for twenty-five (25) years, but two (2) years as an Access Teacher. The ACCESS lab has two parts. The first is IVC and the second is distant learning. With every job, there are challenges.

Mr. Rose says the biggest challenge is learning the language of this new cultural. Teaching IVC is unlike anything you have seen; new communication problems. For instance, the teacher is in one location and the classes are in another. It is hard to tell whether the students are engage or goofing off. The facilitator in the other area plays a big part for the teacher; they should help keep the children engage during sessions. As for the distance learning, you cannot see the students at all; it is like an on-line course and all you can do is get the context out. Again, the facilitator is the key to keeping the students on task. Last but not least, Mr. Rose desires to create a Psychology engagement course lessons that will keep the students attention.

This technology is nothing you have seen before. It definitely has the potentials to do what it was designed for. This ACCESS lab came with a codex, smart board, microphones, LCD’s monitors, lap tops and Elmo. The equipment is control by the codex; the teacher tunes every location in from the codex. Right now, one of the fears of this new technology is not enough time to learn the new language. Therefore, the students will not reap the full benefit of the learning lab. In Mr. Rose’s opinion, technology is ahead of the teachers who teach in the lab. One of the most interesting parts of the whole interview was his ability to create a testing web-site http://www.rosemobile.com/for his IVC course. This did not come with the equipment. He created it to make the testing process better. The future outcome of the ACCESS lab is “great opportunity with cool tools, but they probably will throw the baby out with the bath water” quotes Mr. Roger Rose.

Project 6: Electronic Interaction

I chose to interview a teacher from the Bessemer School District located in Bessemer, Al. This school district is considered an urban school district. They receive funding from the Federal government and all of its Elementary Schools and Middle schools have a state- wide Title I program. If you would like general information on the schools you can visit their website http://www.bessk12.org/ . This website will give you general information about the Bessemer School District.

Ms. Nikkia White is an English Language Arts Teacher and Technology Coordinator for New Horizon Alternative School in Bessemer; she has been teaching for four(4) years. I chose to interview her because of the interest I have in Special Education and helping students that are troubled. The students they service come from the “base” schools in the district. Because of the nature of the code of conduct for the district, any students that are in violation of the policy and procedures will be sent to the alternative school. The school service elementary schools through high schools; but, the majority come from high school and vary in grade level (9-12). This means that Ms. White teaches any student that comes through the school. Ms. N. White tries to give each student a chance to prove that they can succeed with that special attention.

Some of the biggest challenges she faces are 1) the bad reputation due to non-proactive teachers in the pass just giving students grades and 2) parental involvement. Ms. White says “parental involvement is minimal to none at the Alternative School.”As the Technology Coordinator, technology is very essential for her as a teacher because of the large number of Special Education students. “Often times, at the secondary level, all you can do is make accommodations for students that are experiencing difficulties” quote Ms. White. She uses auditory podcast with the use of MP3 players or IPods; some of her students are auditory learners. She also uses blogs and iGoogle pages as an extra resource. Ms. White feels that technology is essential not just for educational supports, but because we have to prepare our 21st Century learners how to compete I such a digital world.

Week 15: Edutopia

The first podcast “The Edible Schoolyard” had several focus points to draw from. The school is located in Berkeley, California; it is a middle school. The name is Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. In a normal public school the students will be shuffling paper, books, and pencils but this school the students in their first period is shuffling dirt in a beautiful garden. Alice Waters, Founder of the garden in 1994 to improve school lunch programs. Her words were “if they grow it, cook it, they will eat it”. The whole process consists of students planting, harvesting, and eating organic foods from the garden. The teachers have to be train to make the garden a center for learning. The garden and the adjacent kitchen lab is a learning lab for social studies, science, and math. The students are not just learning academics but also, life skills that have been forgotten.

The Second podcast “A Night in the Global Village” is a wonderful way to connect students to other cultures. I like the concept of the whole process. This podcast was filmed at Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas. The main focus is on hunger and poverty. This experience will help students resolve emotional conflicts in the classroom. It teaches children to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. When the teachers and students arrive, they tour the village to feel the living quarters. The scene that is created is from other countries that are poor in nature and unhealthy conditions. For instance, little or no water, no electricity and using nature to survive this will help students appreciate life and what they have and take nothing for granted.

I had the opportunity to attend “Raise the bar and close the Gap” workshop in 2006. Dr. Rita Pierson a wonderful motivational speaker spoke on poverty and how children learn who are affected by poverty. It was an eye opener. Poverty is a whole different world all by itself. Students have only one thing on their minds survival. As a teacher, I could be more attentive to their needs and try to understand their emotional pain. This podcast and the workshop teach you to be considered and try to help build their lives instead of destroying it with unconcern. The first podcast, I learn I could use the environment to make connection with the real world. The student at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School was able to see social studies, science, and math in every day living through gardening and cooking. I know the Mobile County Public School System will not create a garden but I still could use other mean to help students make connections with the outside life.

Even though I will not directly be inside a classroom all day, these principles could still be utilize with my intervention group. Even now, some students I teach share personal things, and some students are struggling to understand basic reading and math skills. I could apply these principles to my intervention group. There are days where I feel that I have not reach them are help them in a great way; so, integrating new techniques will be a rewarding experience for me and the students. With the kindergarten age group teaching from nature sometimes is the best thing. For instance, I could take a leaf from a tree and use it for phoneme sounds, colors and alphabets. They encourage us now to find ways to keep the students engage. I know I will not be able to use everything but there are some good techniques I could incorporate little by little on this teaching journey.

Week 14: Plusses and Minuses Of Blogs In Our Classroom

I have grown to like and appreciate the new web language blogging. A blog is nothing but a web-journal. The order of the blog is kept in order just like you would a written journal. Through this course and the projects we had to do concerning others blogging, I found out that there are different types of blogs and almost everyone has a blog. Blogs are used for advertisement, information, and as a resource for students. Therefore, with all of this in mind, I will discuss the pluses and minuses of my blog and a classmate.

The blog that I chose to review was Karen Schotta. Both blogs are well up-to-date. The topics are assignments from our EDM (Educational Media Course). The templates were nice; each classmate chose a design according to their own personality. Each blog have appropriate topics for their post. The pictures that are posted are clear and some are ADA accessible. We both used links in our blog post; Karen’s blog has more links than mine and I like that. Reviewing her blog is helping me to use more links and pictures.

Wherever you have a positive there is a negative. Each person can improve to make blogging more professional. We must remember that our blogs will be reviewed over the internet; so, there are some grammatical errors that need correcting and some blog posts do not have correct sentence structure. I have some links need correcting and a picture that is not ADA accessible. All of this will be corrected before May 4, 2009. Also, some of the information on a few posts is not on the topic. We must make sure we report information concerning the assign topics.

After the audio podcast our group did on Interesting Blogs on the Internet, made me aware of how to do a blog that is attractive for the internet users. First of all, I now that we are not perfect, but we learn from participating and others that have the expertise. As we state in our audio podcast as future teachers we hope to remember to utilize this information in our classrooms. Therefore, we must remember to have great clear pictures that are ADA accessible, correct grammar, usable links and information that relates to the topics. To review our blogs from this class go to http://averittedm310spring09.blogspot.com/.

EDM 310 Podcasts: Critique for Improvement

I listened to four podcast and the one I participated in. First of all, I would like to include that everyone did great research on their material. I believe we all did a great over all job. The assignment was given so we could critique one another for improvement. Everyone could use improvement in one way or another. The podcasts I chose to listen to were “Burp Back Education”, Source Materials for High School Teachers, Technology used in the Classroom at USA, Can Podcast be used in Classes I will Teach, and Interesting Blogs I found on the Internet (which was mine).

In all of the podcast, we could enhance vocal variety. Some of the speakers were speaking too softly even me. Some of the podcast could use more interactions among the panelist. To sell our information to the public we must first have excitement in the delivery of the topic being discussed. We want to hold the audience attention. To have a podcast more exciting also we must remember to not present it as a read along topic.

In a few podcast presentation, I heard a lot of ah’s and some pauses. When I took a speech class it was told to me that too many ah’s could ruin a speech and an audience will lose interest. Last but not least some of the moderators could have been more verbal with casual talk among the panelist. One of the major responsibilities of the moderator is to set the tone through a strong introduction. I believe that everyone has gotten over a little of stage fright and we will definitely piggy back on this experience for future references. So, when we are in our classrooms, I hope that we remember that podcasting can and is a useful tool to use in teaching.