Blog Post 5

What I learned from the conversations between Dr. John Strange and Anthony Capps.

The conversations among Dr. Strange and Anthony Capps, via webcam, were quite interesting to watch. The conversation dealt with project based learning for third graders, as well as everyone else. After watching these videos I have a better understanding on project based learning and also a better understanding of what it is to be an educator when using project based learning. Something interesting I learned from this was that with project based learning you are trying to incorporate many goals within a project to acquire new knowledge to students. Anthony mentions some goals of a good project in the video, Anthony states that for a project to be successful, "It needs to be provided to an authentic audience, the students should be interested in the topic, it should involve the community and the project should be driven by state standards content." When students come together to work on a project, this project should be presented to an audience. Providing the project to an audience allows feedback from peers to the students and allows the students to learn from one another. Also when forming a project be sure to think of the students and what interest them. Students will preform much better on a project if it is on something that they are interested in. Another great component of a project is to involve the community into it. When you involve the community into a project for kids, you are providing them with a better understanding of how new knowledge learned from the classroom, can be used and explored all around them. However, one of the most important aspects of a project is that it should comply with state standards. For an example, if you are developing a project for fourth graders, the project should obtain goals that the state has developed as necessary for that grade level to know and understand. With project based learning, it is very crucial that children are allowed to revise and reflect their work. When children are able to revise their work they are allowed to see what mistakes they may have made, or are shown in which other direction they could have taken. This allows children to see that there are many other ways than just one to reach a goal.

Another fact I learned from these videos is that teaching is hard work. Teaching is a job that never ends, and to be a great educator, you, yourself, has to be interested in learning. Also as an educator, you will find that things don't always goes as planned. None the less, as a teacher you have to be flexible and creative to develop an alternate strategy to obtain the goal you want to meet. So yes, teaching can be hard work, but if you enjoy what you do and look at it in a way that you are helping children succeed in gaining an education that they will use to carry them throughout life, you'll never work a day in your life.

C4T Summary

The blog I have been following isThe PE GEEK This blog is a physical education blog and it deals with physical education in today's technological advanced world. In today's world, it is getting harder and harder to find time to exercise. There are just so many distractions out there today! A lot of those distractions are in fact what we rely on so heavily, technology. Today's world is constantly revolving around the newest technology and we are always looking to see what we can do to make the newest, even better. So ask yourself this, "What can be done to motivate people to live healthy lifestyles?" The answer is actually quite simple. In order to get people more excited about exercising, we should take the new technology that we have and use that to create exciting and productive applications. If you go to the app store and search for an app that allows you to play games, while being active at the same time, you will find tons. For example, one app isActive Kids Coloring, this app allows children to color images, not by sitting in one place though. This app has fun essentials that makes children want to get up and moving.

Another great app mentioned on this blog is The Walk. The walk is composed of different walking trials that almost allow you to escape to another land. The app accounts for the distance that you have traveled and the more you have traveled, the more of unlocking surprises occurs. Both of these apps provide active exercise, which is very beneficial to its user, and not to mention, it's fun!

Blog Post 4

What do we need to know about asking questions to be an effective teacher?

Asking questions in the classroom is very important but how do you go about asking a question so that every student can benefit from it? Many teachers can be enabling children from learning on how they ask questions in their classroom. As a teacher it can be easy to get caught up in a lesson and you begin to ask questions like, "Does everyone understand"? This type of question is not focused on an individual student but rather the entire class as a whole and most likely questions like this provide no useful feedback. This type of question is generally used to make sure that you may continue on with the lesson, however, many students may not speak up and inform you that they do not understand. So instead of addressing the class as a whole, begin to focus on the individual student. Make sure that you are not calling on the same person over and over again, mix it up and have the students prepared to answer a specific question. When asking a question you should address it to the entire class so that everyone can be thinking of an answer. Then immediately after the question has been asked, pause for a brief moment while you scroll the classroom for someone to call on to answer the question. By taking this approach to asking questions you are becoming more productive by getting the entire class involved and also you are decreasing the amount of students who usually don't pay attention. If you use this method, your students are more likely to be actively involved with the discussion so that if and when they get called on to answer a question, they can do so properly.

So now that we know the proper way to ask a question, lets talk about after the question has been asked and the student begins to answer the question. First and foremost, you should always allow the student to finish what they are trying to say. Try and not interrupt the student, save your comments until after the student has finished answering, then you can tell them why or why not it was correct. Also a great way to get the whole class involved with asking and answering questions is to encourage your students to communicate with one another and to gather different viewpoints from their peers. If more teachers adapted this type of questioning and answering, the outcome of how the children learn and interact with one another would, without a doubt, increase.