Alice 2.3

A Whole New World - Alice 2.3

Wow! Alice was very interesting and it required (at least for me) a lot of patience and time to get use to it; learning to navigate through all the tools. I did enjoy it because of the different gaming aspect of it and it literally was "A Whole New World." This would be awesome to put into classes to help kids with the concept of computational thinking and it would give them the confidence of figuring things out for themselves, which in my opinion is what most learning experiences lack these days (people just want the answers right then, they do not want to work for it.) I would recommend Alice to other educators.

By experiencing the different games in my group, I got to see how others used the game in various ways to teach a point. It was neat to see how they interpreted the game and used it to their personal imagination. The Ladder of Feedback for this activity was more difficult to do I thought because their is no limit to what someone can create with Alice. It was hard to judge someone's imagination. It is easier to give them suggestions. Overall, I liked the Alice experience and I have learned a lot by using this program.

Educational Society of Choice

ISTE

My educational society of choice would have to be ISTE  or International Society for Technology in Education. I am still trying to figure out what I want to do in education as far as what level and subject to teach, but I do know that technology has always been one of my favorite things.

Benefits of Standard ISTE membership to help me professionally.

• 60% off webinars - I could view these with my fellow co-workers and it could benefit all of us.
• Access to the Learning & Leading with Technology magazine - By reading these, I could be up to date with the world of Technology and begin to use it to my advantage in my classroom.
• ISTE conference and registration discount - By going to this, I could interact with others from around the world about how they use technology. I would also get to view real gadgets in action.

Visit ISTE

ISTE Link

Ladder of Feedback

Paper Vs. Verbal Feedback

From experience with feedback on paper and verbal critics, I think the paper way is a little more critical than the verbal way because people have a harder time giving feedback verbally than they do on paper. It is easier to critic someone on paper than it is to say it too their face, unless it is positive. I believe it is that way with a lot of people. The verbal way can be very beneficial though because it builds a person's ability to structure him or herself to give people feedback and also the person they are speaking too; making them more flexible to take negative feedback in a positive way and build themselves up from it. Overall I like both ways because I enjoy helping people improve; I like to improve as well.

 

Multiple Intelligence

The activity in class today about multiple intelligences was very interesting. The video about the school with Smartville in Georgia was a very new and different approach in education that I have never seen before. The act of letting children learn through their own personal style or multiple intelligence was intriguing. It seems as if their students are learning a lot through their own personal intellectual way and comprehending it better.  I also enjoyed taking the multiple intelligence test; it gave me an idea about how I learn best. My biggest multiple intelligences are musical, nature, and self-smart. I see this now because I love animals, music, and I study best by myself. But, if we were to incorporate the Smartville idea in a school that didn't teach that way, it seems that the biggest challenge would be having more than one teacher in the classroom to help lead the individual intelligences groups, especially for little children. Other than that, I love the ideas that go with multiple intelligence teaching.


Visit my chart:

Allison's M.I. Chart

Understanding What the Teacher Wants - Improvement 

The purpose of the blog is to help the students improve their speeches and to also teach students to take and give criticism in a positive and truthful way. But, the blog wouldn't be the entire concept of how the classroom would evolve. The students would be responsible for showing their improvements in the class through their speeches. The students would know that they had a successful speech if they improved from the last speech they presented. Improvement, not perfection is the key. Another activity that would go hand and hand with this activity would be to assign each student to a group and they would work together on a Getting to Know Yay project. Their first goal would be to read everyone's About Me blog post and get an idea about everyone in their group (on their separate computers/devices provided by the school.) Then they would talk to one another and get to know everyone in the group personally. Then the groups would rotate to new students and do the same thing. This would not only get everyone involved in the classroom, but also let every student learn about each person impersonally first and then hopefully find something to start a conversation with, with that student (their likes, interests, hometown, etc.) This activity would hopefully make the class feel better while presenting speeches because they wouldn't be presenting in a room full of strangers. This is more of an icebreaker for a beginning of the year activity.   

Educational Blogging 

This is my first blog ever, but so far I really love the idea of using it in the classroom. Blogs can be really helpful for enlightening children outside of the classroom, like for doing homework assignments.

One activity that comes to mind with the use of blogs would be teaching kids how to take constructive criticism from other classmates. This could be about projects they did, speeches they had to present, or even reading assignments they blogged about (sort of like we do in class.) But, for this instance I'll use speeches. Students would have certain speakers each day in class and they would bring there device to school to blog after they spoke or just bring some pen and paper and take notes about the speeches that way. Each student could comment on a blog of the speakers summery or outline they posted on their page of the speech they presented that day. This might not only help the speaker improve their speeches but also give them positive reassurance from classmates. This would help students learn to take constructive criticism and apply it to their work. The way the teacher would know that they had learned something from this experience would be the improvement in their speeches.