Teaching Tots Big and Small

Link to netvibes

turntothesun — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:02:17 +0000

http://www.netvibes.com/#General

Twenglish

turntothesun — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:34:15 +0000

One twitter related application I stumbled upon is called Twenglish. It is an english to twitter translator which quite simply puts T’s and W’s in the place of letters in front of words. For example, if I were to say “Hello, how are you?” twenglish would translate this to say “twello twow tware twou?”. While this seems like a silly way to speak, I think it could actually be quite helpful in elementary classrooms. Students can use Twenglish to practice speaking in front of the class, and although twenglish isn’t a proper form of english, it would eliminate an awkwardness and fear for children who become stage fright and nervous in front of the class. With the students speaking in Twenglish for some assignments, it can be seen as an icebreaker and a fun way to overcome anxiety in public speaking at a young age which will then stay with them throughout the upper levers of education.

Following Serena Williams

turntothesun — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:25:26 +0000

On twitter I am currently “following” the professional United States tennis player Serena Williams. It is very interesting to see the type of comments she posts and to see the type of people she herself is following. For an avid twitterer their profile page and people they are following really does say a lot about their character. Serena Williams is constantly posting comments about her workouts and celebrity appearances at different events, but it’s also neat to see that she, like any average person, has bad days and get’s annoyed at silly things like traffic. The people Serena Williams follows are celebrities, athletes and musicians. Even if a person had no idea who Serena Williams was, they could get a very clear understanding of her through who she follows. To name a few “A Listers” that Williams follows are Britney Spears, Green Day, Russell Simmons, and Tyra Banks. This alone shows a person that she is a celebrity herself, because most of these people only accept followers they know. Also, it is believed that these accounts are made and upheld by the actual celebrities because their profile is marked as “Verified Accounts”. Maybe someday people will be so interested in me that I need to have my twitter profile verified, but for now I can live through celebrities like Serena Williams by following her on twitter.

Personality tests in the Classroom

minigrl21 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:45:27 +0000

In my Characteristics of Knowledge class, we took personality tests from this website as well as the LCI’s again, which each Rowan student had to do.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

This test generalizes certain characteristics that each person may possess. It determines whether or not you are an interpersonal or intrapersonal, what flaws or concerns you may have, or how you prefer taking in information. This test along with the LCI test are familar with me and are also becoming useful in the classroom. The results show wheather the person is a technical, sequential, precise, or confluent. The test arn’t always exact, but can give a gist of how each student may succeed in learning the best by asking a variety of questions. In my opinion I find that determining an explicit personality of a person through a test may be invalid, but answering questions such as “Do you work better with others or alone?” may give teachers insight on the individual students and how they perform in and out of their classroom.

Feelings from Around the World

coco22789 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:00:27 +0000

We Feel Fine is a web site by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar that pulls quotes from different people’s blogs beginning with “I”. The quotes are from people from all over the world and there are six movements to show the feelings. In madness, the circles and squares move all across the screen, and the different colors represent different feelings that people have. For example, yellow means “good”. Murmurs is when all of the shapes go to the tops of the screen and different feelings drop down the screen. Montage pulls up different pictures with different quotes that go along with them. The three others are Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds. I encourage people to check out the web site because it is so interesting to see all the different feelings around the world. I noticed that I’d click on one and it would explain exactly how I felt at that moment. It was almost strange to think that there is someone out there that I don’t know and will never know, who feels exactly like I do at the moment. This web site is practically addicting because I found myself sitting there for almost an hour the first time clicking on all of the feelings. Today, there are so many new and interesting things that people are coming up with, I wonder what other things are to come.

TwitWall app

coco22789 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:05:03 +0000

One Twitter application I found very interesting was TwitWall. It reminds me a lot of Facebook. You can blog, display pictures, upload videos, embed your widgets, and share your favorite music with those who follow you. To me, Twitter is a good way to keep in touch with people by updating your status and letting other people know what you’ve been up to. By having the TwitWall application, it makes it much more personalized. Someone can’t know much about you just by reading your tweets. However, if someone reads your blogs, sees what kind of pictures you have, what kind of music you like, and what widgets you embed, they’ll find out a lot more about what you’re like and what interests you have. I believe adding videos is the best feature of this application. By seeing the types of videos a person adds, you are able to see what kind of humor they have, what they are interested in, and you can determine whether or not you have a lot in common with the person. If you do have a lot in common with them, it may make you want to visit they’re page more often. People in the Elementary Education field could definitely value this app. If the TwitWall has education-related videos and talks about education-related subjects, it will make people in that field want to visit the site and possibly get some useful information from it. This could be useful for almost every field.

Group Tweet Perfect for Educators

Brittney — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:18:50 +0000

Group Tweet is a Twitter application that allows a group of people to communicate privately using direct messages. Only the people in your group can see your updates and tweets. This application is great for teachers because it can allow them to communicate about school-related issues. In a school, it is highly necessary for teachers of the same subject and/or grade to communicate about many things such as curriculum, assignments, tests and much more. However, there is not always enough time to discuss all of the matters that may be needed to talk about. Group Tweet can allow those teachers to create a Twitter group just for them and for school discussion purposes. This application would allow educators to save a lot of time and hassel. Another good thing about the Group Tweet application is that it does not have to be instant, like a conversation is. One members of the group can tweet a reminder to the other members and the others can see it when they sign on.

As a future educator, I want to become familiar with and use this application. I want to introduce it to other educators as well because I feel that it is a great way to stay in the loop and to save time and aggrevation. Twitter has several applications that help to make our lives easier that I never knew about. Group Tweet is an application I am glad to have come across.

What does Twitter say about a Person?

Brittney — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:29:56 +0000

I chose one person from Module 1 and I analyzed the people she follows and the people who are following her. This person’s twitter username is Imsolindsay. Just by observing the people who she follows, I can tell that she is obviously a writing arts major because she is following all of the people in the Introduction to Writing Arts class. I can also tell that she is interested in popular celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres and Holly Madison. I can also tell what type of music she is interested in because she is following artists such as Katy Perry. Another interesting fact that I was able to get from the people she follows is that she is studying to be a an early childhood teacher. Imsolindsay is following Teachingjobcast and k3teachers. I was also able to see that she is following Insidecheer and that topcheers, Cheer1fm and Cheertough are follwing her. This tells me that she is interesting in cheerleading.

It is very interesting to look at a person’s Twitter page to see what that person is like. I was able to tell that Imsolindsay is attending Rowan University and is an Early Childhood and Writing Arts major. I was also able to get insight into the type of music she likes and that she enjoys cheerleading. Twitter can tell a lot about a person. It is also great for professional development because a person can follow people and corporations from their career to receive information and insight. Twitter is a great social networking site.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

turntothesun — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:16:09 +0000

I have to say I still haven’t bought into the whole twitter thing. Of course it has it’s ups and downs and I can see why some people like using it, but I just don’t think its a good way for me to communicate. It’s fun to follow celebrities and athletes to see what they’re up to, but I don’t think anyones that interested in when im waking up or going to bed. This isn’t to say I don’t have an interesting life, I just have different ways to express myself without tweeting. I really enjoy using facebook so I can store pictures and see my friends albums, and this is something twitter lacks. Maybe one day i’ll become more interested in twitter, but for now I don’t have much need for it.

Whole Brain Teaching

turntothesun — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:05:50 +0000

I just found an awesome video on “whole brain teaching” in a kindergarten classroom. It’s a creative and quirky way for students to participate in the classroom. They are taught word phrases and hand movements for the way they are supossed to be acting. For instance, “bubble in the mouth” means the children have to be very quiet. It also creates ways for the young students to talk and interact with eachother throughout their learning process. They recieve sticker stars as awards and “saddy” faces when they do something wrong. I hope you like this teaching style as much as I did.