Petcha Kutcha

Here is the slide show from my Petcha Kutcha presentation. I had decided to talk about math because it was something I enjoyed a great deal.

Google Forms

In week 9 we learned how to create Google Forms. In my form I asked students about how much they moved around.

"Sam I Am"

In her video Sam showed a lot of skill when it came to dealing with technology. I found it interesting when she mentioned how a lot of her learning is done through trial. This video also pointed out where learning can also take place in environments not necessarily geared towards education, for instance learning teamwork and collaboration through World of Warcraft.

I think that these both can be very important to incorporate in learning. The "jump right in approach" to some education can help with developing critical thinking skills which carry over into other assignments like when she took it upon herself to find a program on her Ipod to help with her book report. Also, although I don't feel that we should feel that we necessarily should have students playing video games in the classroom but they would get more out of their education if it incorporated what they enjoyed doing.

Wikis

Paula White talks about an interesting tool for the classroom in her video, "Parallel Play or Leveraging the Wiki Platform for High Quality Work." Wikis are a great tool for the classroom. They provide easy access for student collaboration and are easy to use. I also agree that teachers need to incorporate what interests students into these projects allowing them to write about what they are passionate about.

A Ton of Information for the Digital Age

I thought that Joyce's video "The Wizard of Apps" had a lot of great tools for properly using the Web to gather information, share information and overall improve the classroom. I also thought the presentation was rather creative.

I had a little trouble reading some of the slides in the video, but those were provided in a separate link so I was able to go back over it which was really helpful. I also appreciated that she included a link to her wikispaces. It includes links to all the Apps that the video referred to and then some, so its a great resource for finding the online tools you need.

Her mention of people search tools peaked my interest so I decided to search for myself. I was surprised how much information came up. It pulled up all of my public networking sites and who was following my blog, even a criminal background check of myself and one other person in Oklahoma City were linked. I feel its good to know what a potential employer would see if they searched for you.

Video Thread

For my Voice Thread I decided to share some pictures of a Deployment back in 2008.

Project Learning

I thought this video was great. The projects the students were doing seemed to keep their intrest more than the traditional textbook classroom, and students seem to get more out of the material when they do the research themselves.




I think a more hands on approach like this should be implemented in more classrooms. Students enjoy it more, are able to help each other when they are struggling, and typically learn several different topics and skills through the use of projects.