VoiceThread Final Assignment

VoiceThread Final Assignment

I wrote a song for my final assignment… Weird, but I wanted to make it interesting and fun! Take a look!

Mentorship Interview

In this video, I outline my mentorship interview.

My mentor: John Fladd (@woodenmask on Twitter)
His blog: http://teachertoys.weebly.com/

Inspired by Google Hangout

Did a Google Hangout with my mentor last night and he sent me an email this morning about how he is already experimenting more with Google Hangout. I’ve never been told that I inspired someone before! Good feeling! I replied and asked him to let me know how he uses it in his classroom.

Unfortunately, my Google Hangout did not record as I did it on the Google Plus app on my phone (which I really enjoy having now!). So I will make a video on my interview with my mentor on the weekend.

Last week of university people! Home stretch!

Good luck.

Shelby

Tech Task #11

The things that inspired my future elementary classroom are:

1) Having a Flickr account that parents can see (inspired by Heather Durnin). I would connect it to a classroom Twitter account that parents could follow as well. I think this would really keep me accountable as a teacher to be doing lots of hands-on learning, experiments, learning games, and interactive play. Since parents could get updates at any time during the day, they could then pick up their child after school and say “Hey, I saw you were learning about motion today in Science class! What did you learn?”, which would start a nice dialogue for parents and their children. The only issue I can foresee with this is getting permission to post these pictures online, but ultimately, I could make our classroom Twitter private and our Flickr private as well, only allowing parents to follow those accounts. 

2) I also like the idea of collaboration, which Heather, Royan, and Clarence all discussed in different ways. My favourite way? Skyping with classrooms from all around. I love the idea of doing a novel study with another classroom. Students could make blog’s (discussed by Kathy Cassidy) and do reading responses to the novel on their blogs. The other classroom that is also doing the novel study could read them and respond however they choose. I came up with the idea of using VoiceThread in the exact same way. Students could make artwork, poetry, videos in response to the novel. 

3) On the topic of Kathy’s discussion on students of any age having a blog: I love this idea! Creating their own little online personalities! I think that this could be a really incredible way to assess students in many different aspects (Writing, Spelling, Oral Language, French, the possibilities are endless). The students could create their own blogs that they could work on at home or at school. Nothing personal would need to go on the blogs, but they could start learning about creating online profiles for themselves safely (like Alec Couros discussed). Parents could also log on and see what their child was up to!

4) Love the idea of making thinking books (avec Royan Lee here). Every child should be able to doodle, create, wonder, and think about what’s going on in life. Students need to understand what is going on in the world around them, and I believe that knowing that starts with their own selves. I used to have to write a “journal” throughout the week for my high school English class. Sometimes it was song lyrics, sometimes it was my to do list, sometimes it was doodles. All that would happen is that at the end of the week, the teacher would look at it and give me a checkmark for completing it. Whether or not I would mark my students’ thinking books is undecided, but I love the idea of having an incredible memory at the end of the year. Similar to having a portfolio (which is what my students in my internship had), only completely self-regulated. 

That’s what I have… so far!

Thanks for listening,

Shelbs

Tech Task #10

I talk super fast…

Thanks so much to:

Heather Durnin (@hdurnin) & http://heatherdurnin.com/

Royan Lee (@royanlee) & http://spicylearning.wordpress.com/

Clarence Fisher (@glassbeed) & http://www.evenfromhere.org/

(Sorry, I don’t know how to hyperlink them when posting a video! Let me know in the comments below!)

Mentorship Help!

Hey everyone,

Really appreciating the feedback on my last blog post; I’m feeling a little more at ease about blogging now that I know I’m not alone in my fears. 

I’m having major troubles with my mentorship… I just don’t know what to do with these kids! I’m with a grade 7/8 social studies classroom and that just isn’t my area of expertise (especially the age group). It is difficult for me also because they are in the USA; I have no knowledge of how their curriculum works over there and what they are supposed to be learning. Maps is one of the ideas I have to go off of… Any ideas ECMP 355?

Is anyone else having trouble balancing your mentorship with everything else?! I sure am! Behind with just about everything!

 

Talk to you soon,

Shelby

Passion for Music & Technology

So, in my Tech Task, I discussed my passion for music. I play some guitar, but primarily I sing. I first found out about the choir from Public School 22 in Staten Island when someone shared a video of them on my wall on Facebook (back when they were called “walls”!). I cannot even remember the song they were singing but I just remember saying to myself “HOW did I not know about this?! How are these kids not famous?!”

… They were already, I was just late finding out about it.

The point of me posting this video is because YouTube is basically how they got so popular. Their wonderful teacher, Mr. B (I’ll post a link at the end of this post in case you want to know more about these amazing people), decided one day that they needed to be heard by more than just people in their community. Now, their videos have hit millions of views from people all over the world. They have sang with dozens of different musicians, from other choirs to Carrie Underwood to Walk the Moon. Can you imagine how INCREDIBLE these kids must feel? Their self confidence must be through the roof. And it’s all because of technology used in the classroom, or in this case, the auditorium.

PS22 Chorus’ YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/agreggofsociety/

PS22 Chorus’ blog (which you can put into your Google Reader, eh?!):
http://ps22chorus.blogspot.ca/

Thanks for reading!