Blog Post #15 Final Reflection

Project #16

Our iBook

Our iBook has a Peter Pan theme and consists of collaborative work within our group along with individual projects and blog posts that we were assigned throughout the semester in EDM310. Our group name is San Francisco and our group members are Emily Huff, me (Emma Elwell), Briley Lovett, and Lauren Reid.

C4T #4

Angela Maiers blog post, Broke, Busted, and Disgusted-Can We Spare Students This Fate?, focuses on liberating your genius from the bondage of debt. No one wants to waste time and a lot of money to go to school for something you do not love. That just piles on the debt, especially if you are not finically capable of making money saving decision. Maiers expresses how important it is to teach student's as much as you now know to benefit them in the future.

In her most recent post, Choose2Matter LIVE, she describes the conferences she has been traveling to. She begins with asking her audience, "What matters most to you and why?". There is no right or easy way to answer this to most students. The process of answering this question is the first step in unlocking the unique genius in each student, by focusing them on their values and purpose, and fostering self-awareness. Students have learned that each of them has a unique genius to contribute to the world, teachers have remembered why they chose education as a profession, and everyone who has witnessed one of these experiences has been utterly transformed.

C4K April

My first C4K assignment for April is Mororoa. Mororoa has been blogging since year 6 and is now a year 8 student at the Pt England School in Auckland, New Zealand. Mororoa's blog post is a rubric on how to write a good paragraph. Her topics are punctuation, main idea, juicy words, and if it makes sense. Once again the student's from Auckland, New Zealand have impressed me. Mororoa has very good points to judge in a well written paragraph. It's definitely a great rubric for young students.

My second assigned student for April is Teija. She is in Miss Nalder's year 4 class also at the Pt England School in Auckland New Zealand! Her blog post is about legan and illegal images. She states that she knows her pictures are legal because she uses the insert tool to search for a legal image that then inserts into your draft of your blog post! I didn't know you could do this! This is very informative, fast, and most importantly legal! great job Teija!

Blog Post #13

Instructions: Watch Doris Fromberg's youtube video What Kindergarten Should Be and write a blog post on what you learned from this TED lecture. This assigned is specifically for Elementary Education majors who wish to teach kindergarten.

My Blog Post:
Doris Fromberg starts off her What Should Kindergarten Be? lecture with the obvious fact that children should learn concepts and skills in direct ways. Everyone needs to consider that young children learn in different ways, comparing physical experiences and comparing interactions with other people and their own feelings. They learn a lot through their imagination and pretense. Fromberg states, "engage in pretense". Research shows that high fantasy children, children whose families have pretended with them, tend to have more patience. Those high fantasy kids also are better with connecting making and are more pretensive. You always seem to see early childhood students sitting on the floor playing with building blocks. What other term for them than building blocks! Because physical activity with 3D materials is creating the spacial perception that they will need to understand concepts in some of the following subjects: mathematics, physics, chemistry, and geography.

The subject of surprising experiences really caught my attention in Doris Fromberg's lecture. If you have a group of students and you ask them which magnet with collect the most paper clips, they will more than likely chose the bigger magnet. Those students would normally pick the bigger magnet because they associate bigger things with stronger things. Therefore the bigger magnet will collect the most paper clips. But if you surprise your students by telling them that the correct answer is the smaller magnet, they don't expect it. This allows them to experience it and learn from it. So they expect, experience, and then compare surprise, learning, and assessment. Fromberg states that professional kindergarten teachers are always assessing their students to see how to further challenge them. Because if children feel competent, they know the possibility of them succeeding. Then they can continue forward with a higher percentage of dealing with an occasional setback easier.

Doris Fromberg's lecture was very interesting and extremely well spoken,as are all TED lectures. But she makes some very valuable points for kindergarten specifically. Furthermore her lecture is very informational and I recommend everyone take time to watch it if kindergarten interests you!

Project #12 Part B

Blog Post #12

What assistive technologies are available to you as a teacher?

Assistive technology is any object or system that increases or maintains the capabilities of people with disabilities, therefore these would be highly used in special education classes. Despite the high need for these technologies in special education classrooms, they would also be used in any classroom as well. For example, you may have a student who cannot see as well as others, so simply using an enlarged keyboard in the classroom can help.

A lot of assistive technology used in the classroom that most people have heard of are alternate input devices. These alternate input devices allow individuals to control their computers through means other than a standard keyboard or pointing device. These technologies include: alternative keyboards, electronic pointing devices, wands and sticks, joysticks, and touch screens. The one that I foundd most important in a classroom with disabled children would be wands and sticks. Some disabled children have a hard time using their motor skills. So any other alternative in general is good; however, a wand or stick can increase their mobility along with their knowledge. If a student had limited mobility another great assistive technology would be a voice recognition program. These programs allow for students to put data into their computer via command than to use the mouse or keyboard.

While watching, Teaching Math To The Blind, I was incredibly intrigued by how hard it is to teach math to the blind. Although it is difficult it is not impossible. Professor Karshmer explains they use little tiles, like game pieces in Scrabble, that have braille on one side and visible numbers on the other side. These blocks allow blind students to line up the numbers when adding and subtracting. The blocks used in the classroom are put onto a grid that will map onto the visual cortex with a two dimensional math problem. Another thing you can do with the blocks is scan them and the computer will say out loud the number that is on the tile. What an awesome way to teach the blind and it is very creative! I enjoyed learning about this so much because I have never heard of it!

It is so important to teach all your kids to your best ability. If that means using assistive technology, then so be it! These methods and devices are created to help those specific students who are disabled. I would definitely use these in any of my future classroom.