Blog Post #7

I will be giving my response to a series of videos I was assigned to watch this week in my EDM 310 class. I will be pointing out things that really jump out at me an giving my reaction. Well here we go!

We All Become Learners was a very cool video done by Dr. Strange. In this video podcast, he plays host to two very cool and intelligent women. Their names are Elizabeth Davis and Michele Bennett. The are the media specialist at their respective schools. They all ponder how the educational field is changing and some of the tools that help make that change happen. I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Bennett at my most recent lab time and she gave us many helpful hints at how to find success in technology. She demonstrated one of the items she talked about in the videos called Padlet. It is a really cool interactive program that helps connect the whole class. I strongly recommend you visit the site to check out all the features it offers. They go on to talk how the role of the teacher and student is in the classroom of today. The teacher should not be afraid to learn from their students because they also have a lot to offer. I thought it was really cool that they touched on that students can also teach other students. This is such a foreign but very exciting new way of doing things.

Using iMovie and the Alabama Virtual Library in Kindergarten was another video that I found fascinating. Once again Dr. Strange is joined by Elizabeth Davis and Michele Bennett. The panel talks addresses some of the concern that comes with exposing kindergarten students to technology at such a young age. The part that really stood out to me was the iMovie segment. Bennett tells about some of the really cool things her youngsters are doing in their kindergarten classes with the iMovie program. She states the kids will go and make a trailer based on the stuff they have been covering. I admit to being a little surprised about to how well these kids can apparently work the program. I just used iMovie last week and I am 21 years old. So these kids are moving much quicker than I ever thought about moving. Marc Prensky described it best when he said today's students are rocket ships!

This is probably my favorite video that I viewed today. These two second graders gave a wonderful short presentation on plants. It was such a well done presentation and they had me drawn in ready to learn more about plants. You could just see how proud they were of the work they had done and were ecstatic to share it with others. It really shows that this kind of learning is working and if anyone has  doubts about that just send them the link to this video!

Dr. Strange in this video interviews two second graders about a project they did with sea turtles. Now this is my favorite video. I just love to watch students who are excited about learning! They talk about the presentation they did and all the research that comes with that. You can tell by their faces how much fun it was and how eager they are to tell Dr.Strange all about it. They said they loved to do these kinds of presentation based projects. I really feel like these two students could teach me a lot about sea turtles and technology.

Christie Whitehead PBL 1 was a really cool video featuring you guessed it Christie Whitehead. She is a third grade teacher and she gives her valuable insight into the changing classroom. She says that all the new tech in this classroom is a new wave of learning. Like a some of the other teachers we have covered, she is amazed about how much the students have to teach her. She uses project based learning to cover all of the core subjects. She has a lot of pride in her students and all they have accomplished. It was really cool to see such an experienced teacher willing to let her students take a teaching role in the classroom. I really look forward to the day when I can have a similar experience.

This last video is a conversation Dr.Strange had with Ms. Lauber . She really details her experience with using iPads in her second classroom. She states that over the past four years particularly the way her classroom operates has changed in a very large way. The thing that really stood out to me was  fact that still use paper and pencil to establish a thought process. Then they move on and use that writing to make their presentations. That is a cool way to show that some of the old mainstays such as those old yellow pencils still have a place in our classrooms.