Blog Post #6

PLNs: What are they? PLNs is short for Personal Learning Networks, which is a set of people and tools that you can call upon for help, consultation, collaboration, or other assistance. I didn't know I already have a PLN in the making. My PLN consists of Twitter and Facebook so far. Both of these social networks allows you to connect with people all over the world. You are able to use hash-tags. Hash-tags is a symbol that marks keywords and topics. I can use both Twitter and Facebook to reach out for help from other educators or supporters.

Project8BookTrailer

My project # 8 Book Trailer is on The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss.

Blog Post # 5

1. In the video Project Based Learning Part 1: Experiences of a Third Grade Teacher Anthony Capps is speaking about what project based learning is to him. He mentions how project based learning is not really trying to see if the students are learning what they are suppose to be learning. However, it's more about learning the content of what teachers are trying to teach in their classrooms. Teachers can combine different methods of applying project based learning within their classrooms. Students can tap into their creativity side and really get into the lesson at hand. He also stated a crucial part is going back and revising their work.
2. In the video Project Based Learning Part 2: Experiences of a Third Grade Teacher Anthony Capps talks about how excited his third graders be when they do their work. Teachers should never limit the students because they will get more out of it than we think. When students are not limited they can really express themselves and shine through their best work effort. Parents and other people involve likes project based learning because it shows real results of students actually learning and wanting to learn more.
3. In the video iCurio Anthony Capps defines iCurio as an online tool that can allow students to effectively search the web in a filtered way. It can help not just students but everybody learn how to become and remain organized on the computer which can help move things more smoothly. Students can really enjoy it because it can help them keep all their projects organized, keep them on tracked, and help them to navigate back to what they were doing before they somehow gotten interrupted by something. There is also a directory on iCurio that students of all grade levels can use and access themselves to where they need to go on the website. It is even helpful for students with disabilities as well.
4. In the video Discovery Education Anthony Capps talks about how discovery education can help students with their research. Discovery Education can be a way of having a personal expert on a particular subject in the classroom through video. The research can take students to a whole new level on what they are looking up information on for a project. Students can get the audio and visual of the subject. After watching these videos I learned that project based learning can be very fun and it's not all about doing the projects itself but it's more about learning the content within the projects. The more you let the students do and not limit them the more they can actually learn and grow. Plus students actually wants to do the work and more.

Blog Post 4

Asking Questions: What questions do we ask? How do we ask? According to Ben Johnson in his writing The Right Way to Ask Questions in the Classroom one of the questions teachers should ask is, "Does everybody understand?" We ask them this to check if everybody understands what is being taught. Even though we don't know if they really understand or not because they might not know if they do or don't understand themselves, teachers still ask this question frequently. Some questions can make some students not to care to provide an answer, so they won't. Teachers must be careful on how we word our questions or the type of questions we ask for more effective results. http://topyaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Not-asking-questions.jpg

Blog Post 3

What is peer editing? In this video three steps are being discussed. There is one important rule in peer editing, which is remembering to stay positive. Staying positive is important because nobody wants a negative Nancy telling them how to improve their work. Plus you want to avoid offending somebody. Staying positive brings us to the first step which is compliments. You want to say something nice about your peer work that you like or find interesting. Then you make suggestions as the second step. You can tell the writer specifically ways that can make their writing better. Instead of just telling somebody their work needs improvements, making suggestions can be very helpful. The last step is the corrections. Needless to say adding the corrections to their spelling, punctuation, sentences, and grammar is the point of editing somebody else's work.

The slideshow Peer Edit with Perfection Tutorial provided some great examples of different suggestions you can make to helping improve your peer's work without being offensive in any way. One of the examples is if their work didn't make sense you can say, "If you add more details after this sentence, it would be more clear." Another way is using different words that can make their work sound even better, such as using the word "exceptional" over the word "good". In the video Writing Peer Review Top Ten Mistakes discusses different types of critiques you should avoid critiquing as you peer edit. One of them is Picky Patty. When you pick at every little thing in a kind of rude way. Another one is Whatever William where the writer doesn't seem to really care what you have to say about their work. Of course there are many more but I found this video to be very useful and delightful. All three of these videos helps shed some light of what I should or shouldn't do when trying to help out my fellow peer on their work.