Independent Learning Project

            I have had a great week learning about American Sign Language for my Independent Learning Project (ILP). When I was first starting my ILP I didn’t know where to start. I typed a bunch of things into Google and eventually I found a really great site and I like it a lot so far. It is a website with a video with 100 common signs. There are a ton of categories on this site, but this week I wanted to focus on learning the family signs.

When I first found the site I just sat and watched the whole video to see what it was like and see what I could learn from it. After watching the whole video in its entirety I started it over and began to do the signs along with the people in the video. I just so happened to be in the library when I was doing this. So I started signing along with the video and I got some really funny looks from the people around me. It made me realize something really important. I talked about last week about why I was choosing ASL as my ILP. I choose to learn this because I encountered a girl that was deaf and I didn’t know what she was saying to me. As I saw the funny looks I was getting from people it made me realize that this is how people perceive deaf people or a person with a disability. They think they are different and don’t know how to take them in, give them funny looks. The misperceptions that people have about people with disabilities is one of the reasons why I choose to have my area of concentration in Mild/Moderate Disabilities, to try and change the perception of people with disabilities in schools.

Now I chose to come to the library every time I wanted to practice signing because it is important to me that the perceptions need to be changed, and I don’t care if I look funny making signs to a computer while I am learning ASL.

While I was signing in the library I learned a lot of new signs. Here is the list that I learned this week; family, mom, dad, boy, girl, marriage, brother, sister, grandpa, grandma, aunt, uncle, baby, single, divorced, school, and church. One thing that I learned about myself in this process so far is that it is hard to remember the signs off the top of my head. I watched the video many times before I could remember half of these words.

I am having a lot of fun and learning a lot about my ILP and I hope everyone else is having a great time with their projects as well!! See you next week with an update on my project!!

Here is the link to my: http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/concepts.htm

TED Talks Galore!

Oh boy did I learn a lot from this week’s TED Talk and article. For the TED Talk that we could choose I chose to listen to Simon Sinek and his talk about how great leaders inspire action. He talked about this thing called the Golden Circle. There are three levels to this circle. There is one large circle, a medium sized circle inside of that, and a smaller circle inside of that. The large circle is labeled “What”, the middle circle is labeled “How”, and the smallest circle is labeled “Why”. One thing that he said about the Golden Circle is that most people think from the outside in, but the inspired people think from the inside out and that is “Why” they are successful. For a person to be an inspired leader they need to attract people to the why of their campaign, product, or anything else. The “Why” is the limbic part of our brain and is responsible for emotions and human behavior. If you talk about what you believe you will attract those who believe in the same thing. The last point that he really drove home was that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

I thought this TED Talk was really cool to listen to and I think everyone should listen to it. Here is the link to the TED Talk I watched, http://www.ted.com/playlists/171/the_most_popular_talks_of_all.

I also really liked the article about how to use TED Talks in the classroom. The story about how she had a teacher that used one in the classroom and the other teacher that used one in an assembly is really cool. It was great to read about real life experiences where a TED Talk inspired students to discuss and talk about meaningful stuff with their fellow peers. There were a couple quotes where she really drove home the point that she was wanting to get across. One of them was that school is all about ides and using TED Talks can help teachers bring diversity and conversation into the classroom. Students need to know about different things that are affecting our society and what better way to introduce that to your students than by having them listen to someone talk other than you as the teacher. She also had a great quote from one of her teachers. It reads, “TED Talks make us pause and listen to the percolation of ideas- art, engineering, technology, the humanities, spoken word and more.” I thought this was a really good way to think about TED Talks.

If I was a secondary major I would definitely use TED Talks in my classroom. However, I am an elementary major and I think it would be a little harder to use TED Talks in the classroom. I am interested in what she said about the TED Ed site and looking to see what they have to offer for elementary students.

I really enjoy watching TED videos and learning more about how I could incorporate this technology into my future classroom. This has been a fun assignment.

 

References:

Cucinotta, O. (2014, August 26). How teachers can best use TED Talks in class, from the perspective of a student. Retrieved January 25, 2016, from http://blog.ted.com/how-teachers-can-best-use-ted-talks-in-class-from-the-perspective-of-a-student/

TEDxPugetSound. (2009, September). Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action. Retrieved January 25, 2016, from http://www.ted.com/playlists/171/the_most_popular_talks_of_all

Independent Learning Project

For years now I have wanted to learn one thing, and that is American Sign Language. Sign language is so interesting and it is truly a huge part of our countries history. Back home, I looked for classes that I could take to learn sign language but I couldn’t find any close.

One of the reasons that I want to learn sign language is because of an awkward situation I ran into a few years back. I was part of the band in high school and at the state marching band competition our band was awarded the wrong rating. After our band director told us that we actually received a rating lower than what they announced a lot of the band was upset. We were all standing outside of the buses and a girl came up to me and pointed to the people upset. I told her that we were upset because we didn’t get the rating we thought we did. After I said that she started signing something at me, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I felt horrible and I didn’t know how to respond to her. She ended up walking off. Running into that girl helped me realize that if I wanted to be a teacher, she probably wasn’t going to be the only one that I encountered that was deaf.

Another reason I want to learn sign language is because I am going to be a teacher. My major right now is Elementary Education with an area of concentration in Minor/Moderate Disabilities. In my future classroom I don’t want to have to rely on a para to constantly be in the classroom if I happen to have students with disabilities. I want to be able to help all students who are in my classroom and I believe that part of that is knowing sign language. If I don’t learn sign language and a deaf student walks through my door on the first day of school, what would I do? In my mind I can’t let down my students that way. I want to be the teacher that is able to help all of my students no matter what their situation is.

This Independent Learning project is going to be so much fun for me. I never thought that I could try to teach myself sign language and now I will do everything in my power to learn as much as I can so I can be the best teacher I can be. Here I go!!!!

Hacking Education

Wow, I learned a lot from the TED Talk and the blog this week. Both resources provided me with so many techniques, strategies, and ideas that I can save to use in my future classroom. Let me tell you a little more about them!

The TEDx Talk is called “Hackschooling makes me happy” by Logan LaPlante. When this video was recorded, in 2013, he was 13 years old and wise beyond his years. He started off his talk with asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This is a question that I can recall getting asked a lot when I was growing up. His response to that question was really intriguing for me. He said, “I want to be happy”. I can honestly say that I have never thought of that when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up. Then in the rest of his talk he went on about how he was pulled out of school when he was 9 and since then he has had a great education. He hacked his education and he couldn’t be happier.

I really liked watching this video. Logan was really smart and made a lot of points that really intrigued me and got me thinking. Our students really do know what is best for them and what will help them learn better. So as a future teacher, why don’t we let students have more of an input when it comes to their education? This is something that we all need to start thinking about and if possible applying to our classroom.

The blog post that I read for this post is called, “Centering on Essential Lenses”. Bud Hunt is the author of this blog post and he had some really great things to say. He had three things that he emphasized in his blog; making, hacking, and playing. Bud said that some of the greatest learning can happen when we make things. Whether it is making sense of new situations or making tools to help us to do things we might not yet be able to do, we should always encourage our students to make things. I already talked about hacking above, but I will give a little more detail here. Bud talked about how to hack means to fiddle with something, to improve a process or a program. So in education it means to change the way that traditional education is thought of and done. As a teacher, we should always encourage our students to think of new ways to do things and never discourage them. Lastly he talked about playing. Bud refers to playing as the search for freedom within constraints and doing this can also lead to very powerful learning.

When I think about these three powerful tools I realize how many teachers did not do these things as I was growing up. I want to change that I want to be the teacher that provides my students with powerful learning tools and helps them learn and understand more. I thought this was a great blog and it really helped me learn a lot.

 

References:

 

Hunt, B. (2012, May 24). Centering on Essential Lenses. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from http://budtheteacher.com/blog/2012/05/24/centering-on-essential-lenses/

 

TEDxTalks. (2013, February 12). Hackschooling makes me happy | Logan LaPlante | TEDxUniversityofNevada. Retrieved January 19, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY

Digital Literacy!!!

What is Digital Literacy?

After all of my research I found one article that I thought was really helpful and helped me learn a lot about digital literacy and using it in the classroom. The article I found was on the Education Week Teacher website by Brianna Crowley. This article talked about different Do’s and Don’ts to using digital literacy in the classroom.

They started off the article by giving a definition of digital literacy from the New York Department of Education. It is as follows, digital literacy is “having the knowledge and ability to use a range of technology tools for varied purposes.” I thought that this was a good definition of digital literacy and I also thought it was cool that an education department considers digital literacy for their students.

In the article they made a lot of great points that I agreed with and I would like to share them with you. The first one was that a lot of teachers are saying that digital literacy is critical for 21^st century learning. In a lot of my classes so far the professors have really emphasized 21^st century skills and teaching students to use them. So I agree with this point because teaching students how to use the internet would only help them with developing their 21^st century skills.

The second point that they talked about in the article was about how educators should be the one that defines essential skills and steps for helping students develop healthy habits and attitudes when it comes to technology, the internet, and their devices. Teachers need to show students that there are benefits, dangers, and opportunities with technologies. I thought this point really hit home. At home stuff like this is not always taught to students and if we as educators are going to be having students use technology in the classroom, then we should be responsible for helping them use it properly.

Besides the great points that the article talked about they also talked about some tools to use in the classroom. One that was mentioned in the article was called Google A Day Challenges. The teacher had their students do this every day and it helped them learn advanced search strategies to find information on the internet. I think this is a great idea and would be a phenomenal activity to use with older students. The article also touched on using social media in the classroom.

I learned a lot from reading this article, but I know that there is a lot more information out there that I could learn about digital literacy. Through this class I want to learn a lot about how to use digital literacy in the classroom and teach students how to be digitally literate. Ultimately I want to teach grades kindergarten through second grade. One thing I really want to learn from this class is how I can adapt digital literacy tools and instruction to fit those grades. Before I started this class I thought I knew a lot about the internet and I thought I was digitally literate, but I think that I don’t know as much as I think I do or should. I want to become more digitally literate for myself so in the future I can help my students do the same.

 

Resources:

Crowley, B. (2014, October 29). What Digital Literacy Looks Like in a Classroom. Retrieved January 15, 2016, from http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/10/29/ctq_crowley_digitalliteracy.html

 

5- Image Learning Narrative

#1

 

 

The first influence or experience that affected my learning life was having Mrs. Geocke as my 1^st and 2^nd grade teacher. When I was in first grade my family moved from East Nebraska to Douglas, Wyoming and I was terrified to start over at a new school. However, the first day that I started school Mrs. Geocke was so kind and compassionate that I felt right at home in her classroom. She always encouraged me to do my best and she helped me in every way possible. When we moved onto second grade she moved with us and was our teacher for 2^nd grade as well. Even in second grade she was a fantastic teacher. She is one of the first people that inspired me to become a teacher. Ever since then when I doubted if I could become a teacher or not I remembered how much she had an impact on my life and I want to do just that for my future students.

#2

The second experience that affected my learning life was becoming a member of 4-H when I was eight years old. I was a member of 4-H for eleven years and I learned so much during that time. Besides the skills I learned by doing projects, I learned a lot of skills that have helped get me to where I am now. I had to stand up in front of people and give presentations, I had to be able to run meetings as Vice President, Treasurer, and President of the clubs I was a part of, and I had to have the confidence to sit and talk with a judge during Static Interview Judging. The public speaking skills that I have are a result of 4-H. Also, as I got older I was part of Junior Leaders and I got to help younger members more. Being able to help the younger members really helped me realize that I still wanted to become a teacher.

#3

The third experience that affected my learning life was becoming captain of my high school soccer team. I loved playing soccer and I have always been a strong leader. However, becoming captain was always of goal of mine. My junior year of soccer, our head coach was asked to step down and the team didn’t know how to handle the new season with a new coach. We were so used to having the two coaches that we had for the years before and we were nervous to start over. As the captain that year it was one of my goals to help the team move forward with the new coach and help make the team stronger than we were before. Being captain helped me learn how to motivate people and help my teammates keep going in the games no matter how bad they got. I learned a lot about leading, motivating, and encouraging when I was a captain and I believe that I am now better able to help students in my future classroom.

#4

The fourth experience that affected my learning life was being able to take college classes while I was still in high school through Eastern Wyoming College (EWC). The school I attended, Douglas High School, offered classes for concurrent credit when I was a junior and senior in high school. Concurrent credit means that I could take the class for high school credit and for college credit. I took as many college classes as I could in high school and ended up transferring to Chadron State College with around 30 credit hours already completed. Now, because of this amazing opportunity that I was offered I am going to be able to graduate a semester or two early from Chadron.

#5

My fifth experience that affected my learning life was being able to intern in two kindergarten classrooms during my senior year of high school. I took a class where I was able to intern in the two classrooms for that class period during the day. Every day I would go over to the classrooms and help the teachers out with anything that they needed help with. Being able to be in an actual classroom was so rewarding and I learned a ton. During my internship I solidified the idea that I want to become and Elementary Education teacher.

 

 

All of these experiences affected my learning life in one way or another, but one thing they all have in common is the fact that they helped me realize my dream of becoming a teacher. I haven’t had any regret about my decision and I cannot wait until I am a teacher and have my own classroom.