Creative Commons

 By Huhu Uet (Own work) [GFDL (<a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html" class="external free" rel="nofollow">http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html</a>) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

My Picasa Account

I already use photos in my classroom a lot. Being a Spanish teacher, I use photos to show what a word means in Spanish without using English. On top of that I try to create simple books for my students using the Spanish vocabulary that we've learned in the class. To make the books more interesting and engaging I use photos throughout the book. I also use photos to test how well the students know the Spanish vocabulary. I have pictures up on a smart board and have the students indicate if the Spanish word I say matches picture one, two, or three. The students hold up the number of fingers that match the picture. It is a quick and easy way for me to see how many students actually know what I'm saying. Finally I use pictures along with my smart board to create an interactive slide where the students come to the board and move the vocabulary word to the correct picture. The students really love the actual interaction with this one. There are so many uses for pictures in my classroom and I can't wait to discover even more ways!

Learning Styles

 I am a visual learner who is good at making connections between concepts, hence the logical intelligence. I am dependent on the teacher for guidance and approval and enjoy participating in class discussions. In other words the school setting was perfect for me. I learned well from lectures, especially if there were visuals or notes written on the board, and taking notes. I frequently asked questions if I didn’t understand any of the material and always participated in any classroom discussions. I enjoyed mulling over the information on my own and seeing how it fit within my own life; my intrapersonal intelligence.

There were very few settings when I struggled with how I was taught.  One of these settings was in group presentations. Being a perfectionist and obsessed with getting an A I struggled with other students who didn’t hold up their part of the project and I often struggled with the open-ended portion of the project. If I didn’t know exactly what the teacher wanted, I didn’t know how to proceed.

As teachers we can’t focus on every learning style in each lesson, but I do think that we can mention little things in every lesson to focus slightly on each learning style.  For example a teacher can start the lesson by connecting the new material to past material and quickly explaining the big picture. Then at the end have a reflective part to go over the material. This would cover global and reflective learners to a small portion.

Then I believe the key is to not always teach in the same manner. Maybe each lesson can’t incorporate all of the learning styles but the in the span of a week or two a teacher should be attempting to use different learning styles in different lessons and combining them when they can. For example use visuals when lecturing and this will combine visual and auditory learners. Then in another lesson have group work or a hands on lesson for active or kinesthetic learners.

I believe that the teacher should focus reaching the majority of the students in the full class setting but should constantly be trying new and different lessons in different learning styles to accommodate everyone. The teacher should also attempt to know how all of the students learn best in order to know how to work best with each child individually. Although this is easier said than done, I do feel it is an ideal that teachers should strive for.

RSS Reader Part 2

Working with the RSS reader has created a combination of feelings for me. At first there was a feeling of being overwhelmed because when you first connect with all of the sites there is so much material to read and to cover and it bothers me when it shows that there are still posts to read. I know, I’m slightly OCD. The other feeling was excitement. I finally have one stop to see all of the sites that I want to follow. No more relying on the computer to memorize my favorite sites so that I don’t have to type them all in every time. There is such a convenience that comes along with this. It is also a really great way to connect with the sites that really hit closest to home for me.

I found that the blog pages that I found were not as reliable for new information as they are simply created when the creator has time and something new to say. However, they were more welcoming for interaction and feedback. In a couple of the Hispanic culture blog there were several times that the author stated that the reader was welcome to ask more questions or give their thoughts and ideas and what worked best for them when it came to learning Spanish. In the other blog, there wasn’t a lot of recent posts, but I was able to post on one of the pages to let the author know how useful the information was and how much I appreciated her taking the time to share it with others. I like that I can thank people for their hard work and interact with them if I have questions. It makes it more personal to me and in this case I’m hoping that it will encourage her to write new posts.

With the other sites I really liked how often they were updated, some every day, others every few days. Although at times it felt overwhelming because there was so much to catch up on. I think that its important for me to remember that I don’t have to read everything that comes up only what really interests me. However, I think it is very beneficial that I experience the frustration, so that I can empathize with my students if they feel the same way and I can explain to them how I dealt with that. The site that I had to skim the most was the news site about Latin American countries. There were so many new stories everyday that I quickly learned to pick the stories that really popped out or the countries that really interested me.

I focused more on Argentina and Costa Rica as I have been to both of those places. Argentina is actually focusing on coming up with using natural products like onions and peanuts to create natural dyes rather than synthetic ones. I thought that was really interesting and great that they are making that switch. I also focused on countries that came up a lot, like Columbia that had several stories. It was very interesting to see which countries showed up the most. I would say Argentina, Columbia, and Mexico showed up the most.

I was also really interested in some of the articles that showed up in the National Council for Teaching Mathematics. Since student teaching and working with students who greatly struggled with Pre-algebra to Advanced Algebra, I formed the opinion that forcing all students through Advanced Algebra is not the best way to get students more comfortable with math. Nor is it the best way to ensure that the students learn the math as I quickly found that most teachers were just trying to get the struggling students through the class with a passing grade. That was the end goal, not actually understanding the material. And there was an article on NCTM that talked about exactly that. That Calculus shouldn’t be the end goal for all students, but more applicable math. It was really great to hear their reasoning and know that mathematicians who know and love math, realize that calculus isn’t the best fit for everyone.

Overall, I felt challenged by much of what I read, as well as supported, which I think is exactly what should be happening, especially for me as a new teacher. I can obviously see a ton of resources for this for myself, but when it comes to my classroom I see 3 benefits. One is showing the students how the RSS reader works simply so that they can see the benefit and can learn to use it to make their own lives easier. Two I love the news site that I found and really want to incorporate a “what’s happening in Hispanic culture today” day where each student could talk about something different from different countries to give a wide overview of what all was happening in these other countries. I think it would be a great way of connecting the students to the world as well as letting them see some of the similarities and differences between their cultures and ours. Lastly I would like them to be connected to a blog that deals with Spanish culture so that they can actually interact and hopefully get feedback from the author. This way they would learn about and engage in Hispanic culture. I think that the students getting this information from a source that isn’t their teacher actually makes it more powerful and meaningful. I’m very excited about integrating RSS readers into my classroom.

Internet Security

For my first tutorial I choose to learn about sandboxie. I had no idea that this even existed, but I would definitely tell people that it is free and easy to download and that it allows you to surf the Internet with complete security. It doesn’t allow anything to reach your hard drive. This seems so easy and manageable that I’m surprised more people don’t know about it and use it. My only question was if you did need to download something from the Internet would you have to turn off sandboxie? Or could you download it and retrieve it from sandboxie? Either way it seems like a great resource.

Next I looked at blocking Spam on my Gmail account. I know how to mark something as spam, but what I didn’t know was that I could actually filter out certain sites or domains and just have them automatically deleted. This is very helpful for me as I get hundreds of spam a day that fill up my spam box. If I can set them to automatically delete then it will be easier to look through the spam from time to time in case something isn’t spam. I will definitely be sharing that with others! Besides this, nothing else really surprised me.

Lastly I learned about google search preferences. I was aware that you could monitor how sexually explicit the results were, but it had been awhile since I was in the preferences section and didn’t remember all of the other choices I had control over. I think this is a great tidbit to know for families and schools because children and students would have no idea that the sexual images were being blocked and that they are only seeing what is appropriate. It is monitoring without obviously inhibiting them (which once they reach a certain age they are always annoyed by any parental protection or the word no).

Getting Things Done

I organized my process first by using paper and pencil. I can always have those on hand, though I can’t always have a computer in front of me. Also there is nothing more satisfying than physically crossing off something that you have completed. On the other hand, seeing a long list of items immediately seems overwhelming and is the fastest way to get me to simply stop “doing”. Also, the paper and pencil way doesn’t allow a quick and easy way to reorganize the list for priority or for a timeline. So I can see a need for switching to a computer program or something in the future once I get a handle on how the process works. I also like to use a lot of different folders to organize what I need to do.

The first time through the process was very frustrating and overwhelming. I often ask too much of myself and when setting the system up quickly found myself adding more and more things in my collection box that I wanted to complete. This doesn’t seem like a problem at first, instead it was actually very exciting as I envisioned completing all of these things and how accomplished I would feel. However, when it came to the process and organize stages I found that I didn’t always know what to do with all of the things I had collected. The anxiety of the indecision of what to do is very tiring. By the time I had gotten through the inbox and figuring out what to do with everything I was exhausted and didn’t actually want to DO anything.

I think that this process has the potential to help me, but at this point it is too early to say. I think if I can stick with the process and get the inbox to a manageable size then it could work. But if I can’t get through all of the steps and be able to get done what I actually need to DO, then it really isn’t helping. I also found that even after I entered something in the inbox, it still floated in my head of when I was going to do it and what order I was going to work on everything. I know this means that I need a better inbox so my brain can trust the system, but its simply not there yet.

I think that I will keep trying to use the system, because I love the idea of freeing my brain of all of that worry and anxiety and over-thinking. But I also think that I need to look into the process a little more and see more of what other people do in order to see if there is a better way to complete my system that would be less overwhelming.

RSS Reader

Here is a screen shot of my newly created RSS reader at netvibes. Aside from the 5 sites from class, I chose 5 other sites having to do with Math and Spanish. The reasoning behind Spanish is obvious as I am a K-8 Spanish teacher. However, I am also certified to teach secondary Math, so I included the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in order to stay up to date with the changes in math.

As for Spanish I included the Michigan World Language Association because I am a member, have attended a conference of theirs, and know it is a good way to stay connected to all of the latest information on teaching a world language. Next I picked a blog (Wanna Jugar con Migo) that has several different children's lessons, links, ideas, and templates for different activities. I will be able to use many of these ideas in my lower elementary classes.

After that I found another blog about hispanic culture, including famous hispanic people. original hispanic recipes, and pictures of hispanic people. Not only will this be beneficial for me to learn more about the culture first hand, but also for my students as they haven't been able to travel to a Spanish Speaking country. Lastly I picked a site that has continual updates of the news in all of the Latin American Countries. It allows you to pick the country you want to focus on or see an overview of all the latest news. This will keep me up-to-date with current events and will be a great resource for my students with all of the information in one location.