Monday, February 21, 2011

Understanding Learning Styles

Here is a screenshot of my results from the Birmingham Grid for Learning-Multiple Intelligences (Primary)

As you can see from this diagram, my primary style is interpersonal, with naturalistic, intrapersonal, and linguistic also being strong. When I took the multiple intelligences assessement from http://literacyworks.org/mi/assessment/findyourstrengths.html, my results came back as kinesthetic being my primary style, with intrapersonal and interpersonal as second and third.

Understanding learning styles and incorporating them into our teaching is important for many reasons. To begin with, the students we teach are very diverse. They come to us with a variety of learning styles, which means that teachers need to incorporate a variety of activities and techniques to truly engage all students. Realistically, teachers cannot develop different ways of teaching for each individual student. They can, however, utilize many different strategies in their lessons. Some examples would be including discussions and problem-solving activities for active learners, and using pictures, charts, and diagrams whenever possible for visual learners. Students should be expected to solve both rote problems and more open-ended problems, as this challenges the sensing and intuitive learners. Including a combination of individual and group work will gratify both the extroverts and the introverts. Having an awareness of these styles can help teachers to enhance their methods of instruction.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Using Images in the Classroom

Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "Inverted"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glisglis/365003674/in/photostream/
By: Glisglis

Released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en

There are so many ways for teachers to incorporate images into the curriculum! Just last week my class was studying birds. We talked about the behaviors of different birds and why it is important for a mother duck to teach her babies how to swim and dive. Some students may have never seen a duck diving under the water, so a teacher could use this image to make the idea more visible or concrete. We also disucussed multiple meaning words. To help my first graders better undestand this concept, I pulled up images for the word "bill." We talked about how a bill can be a piece of paper money, it can be money that you owe, and how the beak on a duck is also called a bill. Because a large percentage of the population are visual learners, teachers should incorporate meaningful pictures, charts, and diagrams whenever possible!



Creative Commons License
Buddy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/59703928@N05/5461965966/.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

RSS Page Reflection

I have made many changes to my RSS page since its original creation. I played around with some of the different themes on Pageflakes , and decided on the MSU theme! This is how my page looks now:



As I was checking my RSS each day for updates, I became very impatient if there were no new feeds! So I would click and search for different pages until I came across something new and interesting, then I would add the new feed to my page. One of the new feeds I added is The Innovative Educator. I added this feed because I like to learn about teaching that is “out of the box” and this blog is a place where educators share ideas about learning innovatively. It is updated very frequently, which is nice.

On Friday, January 28 and on Thursday, February 3, I read a couple of interesting blog posts from The Innovative Educator that I found to be very relevant to this class. They were called “10 Ways Technology Supports 21st Century Learners in Being Self Directed” and “10 Ways Facebook Strengthens the Student - Teacher Connection.” Both are good reads!

The author of this blog has been labeled as having ADHD, and I found her posts such as, “Passion (Not Drugs) As Treatment for ADD/ADHD” and “Cure ADHD without Drugs with These Resources from Doctors, Educators, and Parents” very interesting. It is unusual to hear about this disorder from the perspective of an adult educator who has been diagnosed with it. I am dealing with students right now who have not been diagnosed, but who exhibit the behaviors of ADHD. I enjoyed reading the comments and searching for any new ideas or activities for these impulsive students of mine!

On Thursday, February 3, I received an email from Classroom 2.0 to participate in a live webinar featuring Karen Hume on her new book, “Tuned Out: Engaging the 21st Century Learner.” From this webinar, I discovered Karen Hume’s website and blog, and added it to my page.

From Edutopia, I discovered some great resources to use for our SIG Proposal under “Free Resources on Web 2.0 tools.” There were some on digital storytelling, which I shared with my group on our Delicious page. One of the books that I shared as a resource on digital storytelling is written by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, and I discovered she has a blog that is largely related to technology integration, so I added her feed to my page!

I love my RSS reader page, and I love sharing all the new things I’m learning with my friends and colleagues! Each time I visit my RSS page, I find good reads that offers strategies and resources to help me create rich, engaging experiences with multimedia!

Saturday, February 5, 2011

PC Maintenance and Security

Since the start of this class, I have learned so many new skills and I've found Atomic Learning to be very helpful and informative. I watched several tutorials under the PC Maintenance and Security section, but these are the three that I found to be helpful to me, personally.

Tips for Safer Web Browsing: Explaining Cookies
I have heard the term used many times, but I never really understood what cookies were. I learned that cookies are small information files placed on your hard drive and later read by a website. They let the website recognize you and keep track of you/what you do while you are at the website. There are different types of cookies, and what surprised me is that they are meant to provide better service, but they can also create security risks.
1. Persistent cookies: popular with large or commercial sites, like Amazon.com, stay on your hard drive when you leave the site, and is read again when you revisit the site
2. Session cookies: exist only for as long as you are on the site, and are then erased
3. Tracking cookies: keep track of where you go and what you buy. They report information to advertisement agencies and provide details about a user’s lifestyle, web habits, & spending habits. This allows companies to customize the browsing experience and provide better service, but they also create security risks.

Good Safety and Security Habits: Running Disk Defragmenter
I learned that over time, computer files can become fragmented. What a disk defragmenter does is puts clusters back in sequence, which helps your computer to not have to work so hard to find them. You should run it once a month to help your hard drive run longer and more effectively. A disk defragmenter is built right into Windows, and is simple and easy to use. I learned how to create shortcut on my desktop, so hopefully I will remember to do this now that I can see the icon on my desktop. It can take a long time…even hours to defragment your hard drive!

Good Safety and Security Habits:System Restore
I learned that this feature is for Windows. It can help fix problems that might be making your computer run slowly or stop responding. If you ever encounter a strange problem with your computer, you can go back in time to a date when you know everything was working fine on your computer. I was surprised to learn that using System Restore does not affect any of your documents, pictures, or other personal data AND, if you don’t like the restoration, it is completely reversible! You can even create a restore point, for example-- before installing new software--in case something goes wrong.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

SLIGHTLY ADDICTED!

I posted once about my RSS Reader, and I have since added more feeds to my page and I am finding it slightly addicting! I am following Dangerously Irrelevant, a blog by By Scott McLead, a leading academic expert on k-12 ed tech issues. His page is about technology, leadership, and the future of schools. I watched a video posted here called Rethinking Education…very interesting. I also read a post called “Don’t teach your kids this stuff. Please?” This post contained very valid points about the pros and cons of teaching (or not teaching) students about responsible use of technology in schools.

From the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) website I discovered the blog of Kyle B. Pace - an Instructional technology specialist who helps teachers integrate technology in the classroom. I read his post explaining Twitter and Educational Chats, and learned new things about Twitter. Because I have never used Twitter before, it was all news to me! I knew I would be using it for this class and I found this post very helpful in explaining Twitter and its purpose.