Video Speech Response

I discovered that I cannot get motivated when talking to a camera and I end up speaking in a monotone voice throughout the whole video. I found this project to be more complicated then it should have been.

Video Speech

I Beileve

Michael Carbonara

SEDU 183, 2:00

April 12, 2012

I Believe

                We were asked to write five “I believe” statements in my SEDU 183 class today. The “I believe” statements had to be written about Education, Learning, or Teachers. We later shared our statements with others from our class; some of the statements I agreed with and thought they were really good while the others I didn’t really agree or care for. Now I’m not trying to say that some people’s belief statements were wrong because everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. But because of hearing everyone’s believe statements I started to question my five statements. I asked myself if they were good beliefs and why I had wrote them.

Eventually I found one that I thought was really good and it was “I believe that we are all constantly learning every minute, hour, day, week, etc. because we learn new things from everything we experience or from every person we encounter”. Basically I’m saying that we learn from experiences in our life. I came up with this statement very easily because every day I learn something new whether it is because I want to or I learned it subconsciously. Now I use myself as an example because even though everyone learns from experience we all have different experiences. One of the easiest examples of my statement is when I was little I put my hand on the stove and burned my hand even though I was told repeatedly not too because it was hot by my parents. Now, because of that, I never purposefully touch a stove. I’m sure I wasn’t the only naïve little kid to do this despite all the warnings, but I can give you another example of learning through experiences. When you start to date or get to know a person you don’t instantly know everything about them. You gradually get to know who they are from the time you spend with them. Perhaps you learn what their favorite color, their favorite sport, how to stay on their “good side”, the best way to calm them down, etc. An example of learning something subconsciously is music. Everyone has most likely had a friend who constantly plays the same song over and over and because of it, I myself will sometimes catch myself humming the song that my friends are always playing. Even though I don’t know what the song is or who it’s by. If you don’t know what I mean or have never experienced this then you’re most likely the person doing this to your friends.

I believe that this concept can be applied to education and teaching especially in the younger elementary grades. Little kids learn most things by watching the people around them, and they really pay attention to their teachers because up until till about the third grade kids are wanting their teacher’s approval. This means that the kids are watching what their teachers are doing. So if we can set an early example to kids on how to treat others, behave, and good study habits then I believe that it will really benefit the kids and the future teachers of the kids. However we can’t just rely on the elementary teachers to do all the work. So we need to reinforce the good habits of the kids throughout their educational careers while trying to stop the bad habits. Sadly there is only so much that we as teachers can do in the short amount of time we see the kids at school. This is where the parents need to also help with the reinforcement of good behavior.

I believe that learning, in some way, shape, or form, was the reason that most of us wanted to be teachers. Whether it is because they love to learn and want to further their education and teach others what they know, or whether they want to make an impact on some kids life through what they taught. Lets move past the hand on the stove and go and learn something new today.

Top Ten Cool Tools For School

This is a list of the top 10 tools for teaching that I personally believe are very useful and can be used effectively in a classroom.


1. Number one goes to wikispaces. I have had a teacher that used wikispaces in high school and i thought it gave great help to not just me but the class. http://aliciapierce21.blogspot.com/2012/03/cool-tool-for-school-wikispaces.html


2. In a close second is Dr. Math. I like this tool because it can be used from elementary to college and it's another way to help the students if they don't understand the math. http://demi-hunt.blogspot.com/2012/03/cool-tool-for-school.html


3. Third is finale. Back in middle school I used a program like finale on a project where we had to create a score of music, and it made creating the score fun because we could play back the music we made. So I believe it's a great way for students be creative and explore what their capable of. http://miawnaj.blogspot.com/


4. Wordle is in fourth but strong. There are people out there (me) who have trouble understanding poems, and if I knew about wordle back in high school i feel like I would have liked it more. http://excerptsfromaneducator.blogspot.com/


5. Teachertube is in the middle of the pack. This is a good way for teachers to support and help one another out in a time of need even if they are far away. http://newinsiteonedu.blogspot.com/2012/03/cool-tool-for-school.html


6. Bitting the heels of teachertube is Study Island in sixth. Study Island is another way for teachers to assign study questions or for students to study independently on their own. http://rweducation.blogspot.com/


7. Helping to bring up the rear is prezi in seventh. I like that there is another source than powerpoint to make slide shows because not all computers come with it already installed. http://uniquelynina.blogspot.com/


8. Third to last is Discoveryeducation. Its nice that you can look at other teachers lesson plans, but I don't really like it because it seems like a lot of teachers could use it to copy the lessons on the website instead of making their own. ecks6307.blogspot.com


9. Right behind discoveryeducation is Animoto. I like it because if you had a photography class this could provide a fun group activity for the kids to do. Other than that I think its more of a hobby site.  http://educs12.blogspot.com/
10. And last but not least is LeeSummit.k12. The reason I didn't like it was because it was only geared toward Early Education and wasn't really an universal use. http://bobsedu183.blogspot.com/

Cool Tool For School

Today in our SEDU 183 class we were asked to find a tool that would be useful to us as teachers or to the future students that we will be teaching. I choose to pick a tool that will be useful to the students. Most students, no matter their age, love to hear the teacher say that they're going to be doing group work. I was never really one of those kids, but that was until I recently discovered the tool called Pegby. Pegby is online program that allows people whether in groups or not manage and organize their progress on whatever it is they're working on. The way pegby works is that you make note cards. These note cards allow you about 200 characters per card, you can put hyperlinks on them, and assign a specific task for someone to do. After creating the note cards you can place them into three different categories to do, in progress, and completed. This allows the students to keep themselves organized and also gives the group or the group leaders the ability to assign certain tasks to each individual. Anyone can be invited to pegby through email and can make a card. So teachers can observe how the groups progress and delegate jobs to the individuals.

Above is a short tutorial on how to use pegby.

Size Matters

The other day we were asked by our teacher to blog about a current issue involving the education system. I decided to blog about the rise in class numbers and the effects it is having on students and teachers. The reason I chose this was because in every class I've taken so far my teacher has mentioned the increasing sizes of their classes. Most of them reminisce of the classes they taught when they first started and about how they liked it more when the class sizes were at around 15-20 instead of 30-40.

While reading on the subject I found two articles about it. One argued that is wasn't the sizes of the students enrolled in the class but the classroom itself that is causing problems, and the other argued that it was the number of students in the class and not the room causing problems. The article against the size of the classroom says that with the appropriate room size the students will increase their achievements. It goes on to say that the size of the room can affect the students negatively with an increase of stress, a lack of privacy, and a considerable amount of interference. Where the article on the size of the class roster says that The National Education Association states that the optimal size of a regular classroom is 15 students; unless the class is for students in specialized programs in which the number of students should be fewer than 15.

I have had classes in both small and large rooms, and have never really liked being in a larger room because it gives me more places to look to instead of concentrating on the class. Which is why I personally believe that the increase in the class roster is the real issue and not the size of the room. As a student smaller classes give you a greater opportunity to have a one-on-one discussion with your teacher/professor, and its is easier to familiarize yourself with the other students. While from the teachers perspective a smaller class of 15 is easier to keep control of than a class of 20 or even 25. This video is of a school in Austin where because of budget cuts each teacher is going to have to have at least another two kids in their class. As mentioned in the video two more kids doesn't sound all that bad but when you have a classroom of 24 to 26 ten year olds keeping them quite and focused on their work is a hard job. So do you think your size will matter?

I Tweet Therefore I Am..

My first impression of twitter was that it was useless and un necessary, but I have learned to if you know how to use it then it can become useful.As a teacher I don't believe it would be a useful teaching tool, but it would be a great way to send out virtually any kind of information such as links, photos, and videos.

Power Point Review

This power point assignment posed a problem because for as long as I've been in school there have been many ways to asses someones understanding of math, but not one of them consisted the use of a power point. At first I was completely lost and didn't know what to do for this project. Eventually inspiration hit me and I found a way to complete the project. Even though I had troubles with creating this power point I could see myself using this as a method of assessing a child's understanding of the material.

music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86tDEuoOSko&feature=player_embedded

blog assignment 1

In chapter 1 of our book Personal Learning Network the authors, Will Richardson and Rob Mancabelli, talked about the use of the internet in classrooms. I actually like where they are trying too take the education classroom and I believe there are some great advantages, but at the same time there are some slight disadvantages.

With taking the class to the internet there are some advantages such as having foreign language classes work with those foreign countries, having english students blog the author of whichever novel they are reading, or having science classes working with other scientist from the National Institute of Health.

This song is originally made and sung by the band Gotye, but in this video its is being covered by a band called Walk Off The Earth. These are both pretty small time bands But they are really good so if interested please look them up and enjoy.


My name is Michael Carbonara if you have any questions or want to know some more bands just send me a question.

Introduction

Hello I'm Michael Carbonara. I'm a second semester freshmen, as well as a brother of Phi Mu Alpha at Edinboro University. I hope too become a math teacher. While using this blog I hope too help people by make/posting videos that will help them with math.

Hello I'm Michael Carbonara. I'm a freshmen and a brother of the Phi Mu Alpha fraternity. Also I'm a mid level  education mathmatics major.