3-2-1 DONE!!!!!!!!

3 Things that I learned.....
For the first time in my short education career I was introduced to Moodle. I have often heard of teachers that used Moodle in their classroom with great success. But for me it was just something that I had heard about. I found it to be very useful for this class and a good way to keep up with what I need to do and what we went over in class.
The second thing we used that I found to be helpful was Symbaloo. I now have symbaloo as my homepage on every computer I have.
The last thing that really stood out to me and was helpful was all the things that we use for iPads. I do not have an iPad yet but when I get one I feel like I will be prepared.

2 things I have questions about?????
How would an administrator use Edmodo successfully with his school?
Where in the world does Google Hangout play a factor in anything? It hardly every works and is not reliable.

1......
The one thing that I will use when I become an administrator is the google documents. I found that to be a time saver and easy for the staff to respond to. It would be an efficient way to get feedback.

#29 The People in my Cohort........

I have really enjoyed this graduate school process through Samford. I have had the opportunity to make thirteen new friends who I feel very close to (even Matt, and Mike when he is here). The people in my cohort are great educational people who I learn a lot from. Since we are from all different levels the discussion have often been very informative as well as entertaining. I often get home from class and tell my wife about the crazy things that we talk about and the funny things that are said.

Since we are half way through this process I thought it was important to share my appreciation for the people who I now call friends. I appreciate all of you and having the opportunity to grow professionally with such a fun group. We are all so different but when it comes to the class we are a family and argue like one too. I appreciate all of you and will miss you when this is over. I won't miss Matt but I will the rest. "Statistics SAY" we will all be great administrators. Right Dena?

#28 Student Choice

When an assignment says that it is "Student Choice" the first thing that pops into my head is to choose not to do it. That is a choice, right? Sometimes I think this concept can be a great option to promote self reflection and critical thinking. Student Choice is empowering the student to take an interest in something that they like instead of what the teacher likes. Or you can be like me and just choose to write about the concept to fill my blog requirement. Just kidding Vicky!!! The student choice has required me to be creative and the sad part is that I have a lot of useless things in my head that I could write about for your entertainment but instead I chose to ramble on about Student Choice.

BYOD #27

I like the idea of BYOD in schools if the curriculum supports it. BYOD would only work in my classroom if the kids could bring in power tools to support the curriculum. But I do see how this practice could be useful in a lot of classes. The major problem I see with this is that we can't distinguish between the student using it for school or playing games and being distracted. Devices can be just as detrimental to the learning process as it can be helpful. I still think it is the only viable option for getting new technology to the masses when we cannot afford to buy it for the school. What do we do for the students that do not have a device to bring or internet access on the device that they have? Do we tell that kid that they can;t participate?

#26 Being a fan

I have a big problem with people who call themselves fans but have never been to or even know where the school they pull for is. I also can't stand fans that refer to everything about their team as "WE". A few weeks ago while standing in a gas station on a Saturday waiting to pay for my gas a nice lady wearing an Auburn shirt said "War Eagle" to me since she saw my Auburn hat. I returned the courtesy because I knew what she meant by it. See as an alumni of Auburn University we use that phrase as a way to greet other people that are alumni. We call them War Eagle moments and I have shared them all over this country and in foreign countries. It is something special for Auburn people and really a great feeling to hear it when you feel like you don't know anyone else.

After we had exchanged War Eagle quietly to each other multiple Alabama fans screamed Roll Tide at us. This is where I have issues with some fan bases. We were not screaming our battle cry out to them to annoy them or out of pride for our school. Fans need to act with class to represent their team. Trust me, I understand the rivalry and the hatred that both schools have for each other as well as anyone. At the end of the day you can still act like human beings and respect each other. WAR EAGLE!!

#25 Digital Citizenship

Digital citizenship is something that needs to be taught as part of the curriculum every week. Students need to be taught how to use technology to protect themselves on the internet. I see many cases each week where students are in arguments with other students at school about something that was said on a social media site. Recently there have been cases of students taking pictures of other students and posting them on the internet with negative comments. People do not understand how something that they perceive as harmless can really hurt someone else. Cyber bullying is growing faster everyday. A lot of the times its not just the students causing the problems. Parents are involved in cyber bullying too.

Teaching students to protect themselves from fraud is just as important as teaching them to be nice to each other on the internet. With the click of a button someone can steal your identity and wipe your bank account clean. Schools need to teach kids to be responsible with this amazing power they have called the internet.

#24 iPad and SPED

I think iPads in special education are awesome tools. My wife is a sped teacher and she has downloaded tons of apps on her iPads that are educational. She uses it to remediate students for the grad exam with great success. This year I saw her use it with a deaf student to communicate when her sign language skills were not enough. The student was able to show her what he needed using the ipad. I have also seen them work great with students with autism. I cannot explain this phenomenon but it works. I guess it may be that it does not force them to interact with someone and the touching of the screen calms them. I am not an expert but I do believe that iPads are more important to special education than the general education population.

#23 I think parents need to get control of their kids.

I think that teaching high school may be the best form of birth control out there. The idea that my child could possibly act like the kids today do scares the crap out of me. When I became a teacher I made the assumption that kids acted like I did. I was obedient and respectful when I was at school and dared not step out of line. I grew up with the 90 or die rule. Which basically meant I better have all A's or I was grounded. Today's youth don't seem to be concerned with their academic prowess. I told a student that if he did not do his work that he was going to fail. To which he replied " I don't need this credit to graduate anyway, so fail me." I hope parents are not sending their kids to school for me to raise because I have no parenting credentials or experience. I am a great uncle but that is because my nieces are two and it does not take much to keep them entertained. Where have the old school parents gone? Whip your kids people. Set high expectations for them to achieve in life.

Flip the classroom

I like the idea of the flipped classroom because it would give my students more time to work on projects in the shop. It seems that by the time we get started on something we have to stop and clean it up. However I do see some drawbacks. What do you do with students who do not have a computer or internet access at home? Where do these flipping teachers find the time to make these lessons? I seem to stay busy from sun up to sun down everyday and do not have time to record a lesson after hours. The flipped classroom sounds to me like having two jobs. As teachers we barely get paid for the 8 hours we are at school. I cannot imagine what my hourly rate would be if I had to go home and teach another 8 hours. Flipping could be useful for special lessons but I don't see how it is feasible for lots of lessons.

#21 I am a hero and a parol officer all in one

This past week I got to experience the ultimate Monday. As I was making my rounds picking up students on my bus a fight broke out in the back. I was forced to slam on the brakes and run to the back to break up to grown boys beating the tar out of each other. This may seem like a common thing to most bus drivers that drive the roughest kids in their school but for me it was the first fight I had on my bus in my six years of driving. The boys were neighbors and fighting over an XBOX that one of them had stolen and not cut the other one in on when he sold it. Yeah I know, they are real winners and in my class too. Well anyway, this started the week off with a bang. That afternoon a student from another bus choked on a piece of candy and I had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on the young man before we pulled off of the campus. All in a days work I guess. Controlling the criminals and saving lives. Hard to believe that all of this happen and I did not even wear my cape that day.

#20 Barriers

The problem with technology in education is that we have to many barriers in our way. We have funding issues that don't allow us to buy the needed technology. Then when we get the technology we are so protective of what the students can do with it that we really don't let them explore all the things that it is capable of. As teachers we are not given the proper training on how to integrate the technology into the curriculum (present class excluded). The main barrier that we face is the fact that we don't know how to use it to produce results. We can buy every kid a laptop or ipad and it does not mean that their test scores are going to improve. It just looks cool in the newspaper. We need technology that produces results.

#19 helping or hurting

I think technology is both helpful and harmful when it comes to literacy. Having technology at a student's finger tips allows them to gain knowledge from a multitude of sources rather than just one book in the library. Students have access to anything they want when writing papers and researching topics. The problem with technology is that texting and social media have ruined everyone's ability to write a grammatical sentence. It has not ruined mine because mine was not good before I got a cell phone. But today's youth are writing research papers with "u" instead of "you". They have resources at their finger tips but are struggling to translate it into a readable form. When is the last time you received a written letter from someone? I received one recently from a friend of mine that was in basic training. It was like I had received a written text message. All of the words were misspelled and the handwriting was barely legible. We as a society rely on technology way to much. I often ask why we even bother teaching grammar anymore because no one uses it.

#18 Recent Article

I recently read an article about how technology is taking over every aspect of our lives. How we as a society spend more time texting each other than speaking to each other. The importance of this article was to show that students learn better by reading the information digitally rather than hearing it from a teacher. It made me think about how we are always hearing about students having different learning styles. Technology seems to be turning the majority of them into the same. If I could teach my kids through their cell phones I would be a genius. But I cannot so I need to figure out how to use the cell phone to get their attention.