Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Comment for Kids Summery 1

This summery post is about Daniel a student at the Noel Elementary School.  Daniel was telling us about the time when he misjudged a new student and was proved wrong about what he thought about this child.  Daniel went on to say that we cannot judge a person based on race, religion, national origin, or how cool he or she is.  Daniel also stated that this country was formed from immigrants and we should learn to be caring and understanding and value other peoples ways, for they could be just like us.  I thought this was very enlightened for this young man to have learned this lesson very early in life and that this out look will serve him well later on in life.  We must all remember that we all come from other back grounds and that is what makes us all different and special in our own way.



Daniel's family is a big family just like the family I'm married into right now.   He has two blue nose Pit Bulls and a York mix dog.  He loves to play several different kinds of sports ranging from Soccer, to Baseball, and Football just to name a few.  Daniel also takes great pride in his family and loves math.  I applaud Daniel and wish the best for him in his endeavors of life  and only hope that he will rely on the strength and comfort of his family and friends.  It was a pleasure being able to blog to this student at noel elementary.

Podcast Numb. 8 Interview with Dr. Baggett



Hope you enjoy the podcast... Phillip.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Phillips EDM310 Blog Assisnment # 5

For this assignment I watched three videos covering the making and actual broadcasting of pod casts.  They were the Eagle Nest Class blog, Lang Witches Blog, and the Benefits Of Pod Cast In The Classroom.  They covered kids in the Eagle Nest Blog talking about people and places in the ancient Roman Empire days.  To being able to make and understand the importance of the class blog as an important learning tool.  I thought these podcasts were well done and very informative especially the one that was done by the third graders.  It is very nice to see that there are teachers out there who do care about what and how our children are learning.  It makes me want to do the same thing when I get my own classroom one day down the road.



I will try and fit some of the interesting back and forth conversation into my podcasts that I will do in the future.  Also this is a trial run situation for me and to know what you might mess up on will only help you and strengthen your future pod cast later on.  I will also get my whole classes in on this amazing learning tool, which can only help your students.  I also like the fact that you generally can get up to ten minutes to do what you need to and that is very awesome.  The whole reason for us to even be in school to be a teacher is the fact that we want to help and introduce new ideas such as pod casting to our classes.  I cannot wait till I graduate from college, get my own class, so I can began using these wonderful teaching techniques.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Phillip Coopers EDM310 Blog Assignment #4

Video #1  Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?

Dr. McLeod is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University.  He has a wife and three children.  One thing that surprised me was the fact that he actually cares about the pace of our public schools advancement in technology.  The schools have a civic responsibility to our children's future and Dr. McLeod is very concerned about the majority of children not being educated by technology.  With technology changing so fast and schools lagging farther and farther behind this is only putting our children behind the eight-ball and not supporting their future life.  We cannot afford to hold our children from this new technology and I love the sarcastic point that Dr. McLeod makes.  I wonder who will be ahead in the future called life.  The person who walks the race or the person who drives a car in that same race.  This is in my opinion the same comparison that Dr. McLeod makes in his argument.

We cannot be so complacent that we allow our children's future to be bypassed to others just because we do not want to teach, learn, or understand things around us.  This is not only wrong, but a grave injustice.  We as parents and teachers should be putting this new technology to work for us not the pen, pencil, and paper.  Yes technology has its bad points, but it has more good things about it than bad things in my opinion.  We can separate the good from the bad just like we separate the right from the wrong in everyday life.  So until we get serious only a select few children will prosper and know what is needed to know in the years to come and we will only have ourselves to blame NOT them.

Video Number 2  The Ischool Initiative


This video sums up what could be a real future for our children today.  This senior needs to be applauded for taking this initiative.  The Ischool is a wonderful idea and the Itouch has got a lot of applications that can be used for the schools purpose as Travis points out.  Some of these applications are the chemical touch, the digital copy of the United States constitution, and U.S.A. presidents.  These are a few of the programs that would help our students be more productive in this new world.  It would also save sums of money as Travis pointed out on text books, paper, pencils, and graphing calculators.  One interesting fact is the importance of how this device would keep parents, teachers, and students connected at all times.  Also this Ischool would save bundles of money for school systems. So if we can get business and people on board this could be a reality of tomorrow.

The one thing we have to remember about something like this is the fact that this cannot be done over night and this will not totally take paper, pens, and books out of our schools.  Also the Itouches are expensive, so what if they get stolen, lost, or broke.  The money that was saved would be spent yet again.  Also many students still do not know how to fully use a computer, so how will they do this.  In theory I love the idea, but I do not see it happening for a very long time.  We cannot even give our children the small items they need now much less four hundred dollar Itouch pads.  How would we even train our teachers?  This would have to be a joint venture like Travis said between Apple, university's across America, and state school systems.  I agree with what Travis said and I hope that this will be our future in the years to come.

Video #3  The Lost Generation


This lost generation video sends out a very powerful statement of how and why we should not try to change things in our life.  It is sad because so many people do not try and change their lives. Instead they let their families fall apart, work take over their lives, and lose hope in themselves.  If people would only try and be more supportive this would not be the case, for people need to stand together for what is right and look after not only their best interest, but their families and friends as well.  As the young lady stated in the video yes one person can change the world.  "Their own world" and it should not matter what society tell us, for our society does not have our best interest in mind.  Society is always telling us negative things about each other and instead of things that can bring us closer together.

Now as teachers we can add a dent to what society wants us to do.  We must learn to put our children's needs first and see to their well being and safety.  Until we learn how to cope and deal with the truths in life we will always be miserable and lonely, families will fall apart, and work will consume us.  We must learn to go against what society wants and not go with the flow of others.. At least not all the time.  We must focus on one child at a time and when they grow up they will in turn focus on their children and take the time to do what is right by their family.  This process happens by our actions, words, and deeds in life and only we can change and influence not only our children, but others around us.  We have the responsibility to do this and must not fail ourselves.  In the end it is we who chose whether or not to embark on this journey called life.

Video #4  Virtual Choir

This was a awesome video and by far the best one I have seen so far in EDM 310.  This blows my mind how this was done and also the fact that these people have never even seen each other.  What about their practicing?   Were do they live?  These are just a few of the many questions I have about this.  Also thanks to Jennifer for finding this for us.  If this is a taste of what the future classroom is then I must say that I am impressed.  Just think no more missing school because your car broke down or because you over slept.  Just get up turn on your computer and boom there is your class.  This makes me want to see what that whole pie will look like once we get this new technology going.  This is what we will be doing in the future and it is with great anticipation that I want to see it come to fruition.  I also hope that others will embrace this new and wonderful technology.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Additional assignment #1

The educational implications are awesome for students and teachers. This is a fountain of information at one place, and the other thing about Google squared is that you can add even more information to the search thereby increasing your information that you receive on the subject. This will come in handy for students who do reports or charts to compare different areas of the world. Teachers can use this to pull vast amounts of information to show the class at one time instead of one slide at a time, which saves a lot of time for the busy teachers. This is very interesting and I will definitely use this when I start teaching. Wolf Ram Alpha is also very good and brilliant, for it has even more amounts of information than does Google Squared. I wish I had this kind of information at my finger tips in high school, for if I had my grades would have been better. This is the tools that we as educators must learn to embrace if we are to succeed at helping our students learn. These tools offer so much help, so to turn our backs on these tools would be a injustice to our children. I can say that since Dr. Strange introduced me to Google Squared and Wolf Ram Alpha I will be teaching and relying on these tools for many years to come. To answer Dr. Stranges questions I did not know about neither of these wonderful programs before I did this assignment.

I have learned that information is fluid and just because someone says something that does not make it so. It always good to think on what we have seen and heard. Generally statistics are overlooked because people do not take the time to actually think on the information that is being presented, so the real numbers get lost. This taught me to be more cautious at what I am looking at when I see and hear statistics given to me at any given time. Numbers are not to be ignored, but studied very carefully, for we can miss a large amount of information if we do not see the whole picture. This has not changed my opinion on "Did You Know!", for information is always changing and it is up to us to keep on top of this new wave of information that we must ride every day of our lives.

Pitcairn islands

C4T Summery 1

The first review will be on the "Dang! I just missed it." Mr Warlick was stating how important we watch what and how we say things, for people can be mislead to think of something else that was not even the case. A teacher was talking about how one could see mars as plane as day in the sky as one would see the moon, but she hinted only at the use of a 75mm powered telescope. This as a result convinced the people to look up in the night sky to see mars, but low and behold no planet. With just a little more time and attention to what we say things like this could be avoided.

The second review would be on "Technology for 21st century Learning: Part 2." Mr Warlick was saying should we reli on new technology to help us out in our schools? Even though the new technology is great it is not really designed for the school learning environment that we our used to. Most of the new technology doesn't even have programs hardly for the looking up and functionality of a classroom setting. He also believed that today we must communicate with more than words, so this brings in the pictures, sounds, and motion that we get with this new technology.

My comment summeries:

Dang! I just missed it.

We as people can overlook the simplest mistakes, for it is natural the way we talk and perceive things. We must learn to watch our sentences more carefully and if not we could be drawn into incorrect facts and not what we need. This will only slow us up in life especially with all the information on line now a days. We must learn to take our time and to provide correct and timely information for our children and peers.

On Technology for 21st Century Learning: Part 2

We love new technology, but there is still nothing like the old way of teaching even though today we have a greater source of information than we did say even ten years ago. New technologies even though they can do lots of things still fall short of being using in the classroom setting. This is due to the fact that they have very few programs that will allow them to be used to help educate our children. We as teachers must insist that our new technology uses programs that can enrich the lives of not only our children, but of us teachers as well. One day technology will be in the class full time, but till then we must watch and pick out what will be used in the classroom setting.

Thanks Phillip C.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Google presintation with screen toaster

Edm 310 blog numb. 3...

Video Number one.

This video does a real good job of capturing the college experiences for a lot of young adults who are in colleges around the nation right now. These young adults told the facts and stated what was important to them and what is really going on right now in colleges. College kids are worried from not sleeping enough, to talking on face book, to being in debt after school, and a multitude of other things. I feel with the students that think most of the things we learn in school do not apply to us in the outside world, for things in school are totally different than being in the real world were there is disease, war, hunger, and natural disasters.

College is a controlled environment were information and learning is done at a state level and lessons and test are given to see what we know according to the state requirements, for what we need to make it in the outside world. The reality is different and most jobs that we go to college for do not exist yet, or do not really use what is on our degree plan. Lots of people think of college as a way to get free money and do not try to get a better education, so they come out worse than the people who do try and make good grades. I wish this video could be shown on the national news, for this would turn some heads and open some eyes to what is really going on in our colleges today.

Blog number two..

It's not about technology

This was a very enlightened teacher and I agreed with what she said hands down. Most teachers in today's school systems look at this as a job and do not take the time to help our children, and as a result, some of our children do not succeed like they could have had the teacher only put just that little extra time into their work with them. Also we must find ways to keep our children coming back to school. It is up to us to keep challenging them with new and creative ways to learn. We must remember that we are their salvation and for some their only hope.

Also just because we graduate college and begin teaching we also are learning and must continue to learn all we can, for if we do not know our children will not know. The last thing I want to tell a child is that I do not know what he/she is talking about. Teachers generally have a great deal of technology to assist them with teaching their students, but very few teachers rely on their computers, the internet, or blogs to help out with class work and activities. This end result is a student or students that have been left behind and they will not contribute what they can to society, because they were not given the chance to achieve.


Blog numb. Three

Is it okay to be a technology illiterate teacher

In today's world of fast changing technology I wholly agree with what Mr. Fisch stated about the teachers needing at least some technological skills. What we do is and will impact the children who's lives we touch right now and to not train our teachers would be a catastrophe. Mr. Fisch said it right on the nose when he stated that, a teacher who does not want to learn is equivalent to a person thirty or forty years ago who could not read or write. In my opinion this is a very scary thought and I would not want a teacher who was not qualified to teach teaching my children about things that they themselves do not understand. This would make it hard for teachers to teach children things that they needed right now and in the future.

I also agree with the holding of technology literate administrators and teachers accountable for what and how a child is thought in school, and also teachers should not get so complacent that they do not want to further their knowledge and understanding of what is evolving right under their noses. Also computers have been around for over 30 years as Mr. Fisch stated, but we still act like it is a new technology, but we all know it is not a new technology, and also the internet has been around since the mid nineteen nineties. I believe it is about time that we get serious about educating our teachers, for without this stable foundation how can our children learn and grow into prosperous adults that can not only read and write, but know and understand computers.

blog numb. Four

I would had never imagined that this many applications for IPhone, new twitter accounts that were created, emails sent globally could increase this fast. I tend to think in my own little world and not about these numbers. It is hard to imagine that this goes on every minute of every day. We tend not to think on this and this is what we really need to be thinking on. If we would think about how our technology explodes exponentially we could prepare a lot more than what we do and with this I fault our states and schools for failing us. Without there support our teachers cannot get the training and education that they need to help our children keep up with these vast and fast increasing numbers.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Blog Number 2 for video's

The first video of the second post really blew my mind due to all the people that were being born and the number of jobs that are going to be created in the years to come. The thing that shocked me was the fact that the information that we learn as freshmen in a technical college will be obsolete by the time we are juniors. That is very insane. Also most people in the United States haven't even been at their jobs long. roughly one out of four is at their job less than a year right now. It makes me upset to know that countries like India have more honors kids than the United States has kids. This is one of the reasons why we keep losing all the good high paying computer jobs to this part of the world. It makes me feel like we have failed our kids and these numbers should tell us to try harder and push our kids greater for it is their future that we prepare them for.

Also Technology is leading the way in today's fast paced information world. More people use and prosper from the internet in ways like never before. This ranges from using the internet to find mates, jobs, and use the social hangouts like my space and twitter. This kind of technology hardly existed twenty years ago and now we put our future on it and other countries have put their futures on this new technology also. Information in this new era is also used and stored in vast amounts on the internet and can be recalled in a nanosecond. In the end this will not go away and people will only get more dependent on this new technology, so we as educators must embrace this new technology and use it to give our students the best education that they deserve.

Video 2

This video paints a bleak picture of what is really going on in our schools in the United States today. Everything around us is going ahead with progression, but it seems like schools are always lagging behind in the technology field and this is not right. Our schools are not cemented in the concrete of time, so why do they not have what they need? This is very bad for our children looking to learn the new technological ways of today's world, but if the states of this nation do not increase money the schools will never be able to bring kids up with today's level of learning that they need.

I remember when growing up how at W.C. Griggs Elementary the parents and school administrators would hold bake sales and candy drives to raise money for computers, but it took around six months to get just a few computers. Looking back this was unacceptable and twenty computers were no where near enough to teach us kids of around five hundred. It is nice to know that twenty years later it is still the same game being played and the only people who suffer are our children. The lawmakers need to come off of the money in Montgomery and give our kids what they need to succeed in life and that is an education with today’s technology not yesterdays dirt. We as teachers and as parents have a right and responsibility to try and get some of these new technologies for our children.

Video Three

I Thought this was a very insightful video and Sir Ken Robinson hit this problem with child creativity right on the head. Many people would be hesitant to blame the world school systems for this fundamental lack of creativity, but he was right on the mark and that creativity was just as important as being literate. With the world mainly focused on the degree aspect of education we as a people have lost almost all ability to be creative and I agree with him on this video. We do not need just academic teachers, but we need people who are not afraid to be wrong and that will try to learn from their mistakes. Many of the things we take for granted came from people who were creative and pushed through the people who stood in the way. Two people come to mind Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Gram Bell. These two men explored their creativity and we got the use of a telephone and the knowledge of what came to be known as electricity.

This video goes to show me that we need to help our children with all the aspects of their education and not just filling their heads with information that more than likely will be forgotten in just a few years. School can be made fun and entertaining for our children to help our children foster these new creativity abilities. However we must embrace this new philosophy and apply it to the kids who want to do this, but in the same sense there is not much demand in the work force for creativity. This means that we as teachers must take on the role of helping these kids even if their parents and society doesn't support them. In the long run the children will remember what we have done for them when no one else would give them the opportunity to do and be creative.

video four

This is a good example of what needs to be going on in our classrooms today not just at the EDM310 class at South Alabama. This teacher is awesome giving the power of technology, self-reliance, and partnership to her students in a rural Georgia school. I liked the fact that if she said something the kids didn't understand than they knew enough to Google the word and find out what it meant. Also Teachers should let students have some control in the class, but not to much. The teacher was also correct in the fact that "when you only have paper and pencil then only certain groups will learn." Most children learn by doing and not by memorizing then regurgitating such as was said by Dr. Strange. One thing that the teacher said that struck me as smart was the fact that she focuses on their talents and strengths and not their weaknesses.

Having this kind of class would be real enjoyable and not a burden, so why do not all schools have some kind of class as this. This is what we need to help our children learn and this also shows that technology can be our friend and not our enemy. The children of today must learn to embrace all technology and each others creative thinking abilities. This would not only improve class time enjoyable experiences, but also learning abilities. I applaud this teacher in her quest, for many a teacher would hesitate to pick up this torch and run with it like she has done