Blog 8-I Only Wanna Be With You

Blog 7-Voki

6 Kingdoms of Living Things Concept map

Six Kingdoms of Living Things

I.       Protista

A Protist is any organism that is not a plant, animal, or fungus. This includes all unicellular organisms lacking a definite cellular arrangement. These organisms are microscopic and are complex celled. Most types of Protists live in the water.

A.    Mold

B.    Algae

II.     Fungi

Fungi are multi cellular and make their own food. Unlike Plantae, the Fungi lack the chlorophyll necessary for photosynthesis. The great majority of fungi obtain their food from dead organic matter , however a small percent get their nutrition from living organisms such as parasites.

A.    Mushrooms

B.    Yeast

III.    Archaea

These organisms are unicellular. They have a variety of chemical tricks to live in the most extreme environments extreme environments. These organisms are different from the rest because they have no nucleus. Archaebacteria are non-pathogenic and live in and around all organisms without infecting them.

A.    Extreme Environments

1.    Extreme Heat

2.    Extreme Salt

B.    Require No oxygen

IV.    Plantae

Plantae is second largest kingdom. The plants in this kingdom are complex and multi cellular. Green plants have cell walls with cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight (photosynthesis). This gives plants in this kingdom their nutrition as well as their green color.

A.    Flowering Plants

B.    Ferns

V.     Animalia

Animalia is the largest of the six kingdoms. Animals are a major group of multicellular organisms. All of the animals in this kingdom's body plan is developed through metamorphosis.

A.    Lion

B.    Shark

VI.    Bacteria

A.    Bacteria

B.    Viruses

Blog 5- A Vision of K-12 Students Today

     I really liked the video A Vision of K-12 Students Today. It was upbeat and straight to the reality of our students today. Technology is going to be a huge factor and all computer jobs are going to increase. However, teachers are not doing enough in the classroom using or teaching technology. Most teachers have not used a type of blogging system, meaning their students have not either. Being a new blogger, I know that this is true and blogging can have a lot of positive benefits.
    This most shocking statistics I saw was where the USA was ranked in the different subjects. Places like Finland are ranked high in most subjects. How Finland approaches school is completely different than how we do school in the USA. Teachers are very respected and ranked among or ahead of jobs like doctors and lawyers. Students go to school year round' and have shorter days. Classroom sizes are very small and there are many teachers in each class. With how USA is ranked, it makes me wonder if what we are doing in our school systems is holding our students back from their full potential.

Blog 4- Gamification

Gamification is an engaging dynamic using points, badges, or progress bars to engage or motivate students in the learning process. It could be used in any age and includes game like features to track success of students. This is very significant because it fosters student engagement helping students build connections, collaborate, and increase interest of course content.

Without a doubt, I would use this in my class. In my classroom we had an interactive smart board. The students loved it! This was the favored center for my kindergarten class to go to. Why? Because it was “fun.” The students had no idea that they were expanding their knowledge on a lesson learned that day or reinforcing what they learned earlier in the week. The small group of three loved the hands on, game like, and fun learning aspect the interactive smart boards.

I would have to do some thinking about how I would actually set up the gamification in my classroom. One downside to the gamification is children feeling frustrated or not liking their peers seeing where they are ranked. So many elements would have to be added to make sure all students’ needs are met and it will have positive results on the children.

Overall I think gamification is a wonderful opportunity for students to have positive attitude toward their work, increase motivation, and foster independent effort. With a few tweaks, I could set it up in my classroom so it would be effective and make the students have a rich experience.

Blog 3- Blogging

Blogging is a not-so-new trend that has been added to a type of scholarly activity that is being used by professors, universities, students, and people world around. I like that a blog can be shared and get immediate reaction, but it does not have to stop there. It can be added to a presentation or article to further share the information. There are many types of blogging besides just writing. It could be through YouTube, a podcaster, or Scoop.it. With institutional reputations being largely created, many institutions are now making it a priority to develop, recognize, and encourage practices such as blogging.

Although blogging is only a week old idea for me, I have concluded it is a very good for all students to experience. Blogging may not give the the same accreditation that writing journals, books, producing online courses does, but it could have a positive effect on students. What I like best about blogging is everyone can do it! It could be done on almost anything including personal experiences, opinions, research data, interests, or news. Since writing is not the favored thing for students to do I would find blogging to be a fun alternative to have students expand on ideas or feelings on specific topics.

Blog 2-Why more schools aren't teching web literacy

Teaching web literacy may not be very common now, but will affect me as a future teacher. Since Mississippi is one of the 46 states to follow the new Common Core Standards, it will be required for me to teach students how to manage web-based information. Without foundational and working knowledge of information and web literacy, students will not be able to produce the critical thinking skills required to appropriately conduct research tasks required in Common Core.

The Web Literacy article says that research shows most students think that they know how to use the internet, but once given research topics have no clue how to appropriately use the search engines. Internet is such a huge resource in present times and it is important that even at an early age students are taught how to adequately use search engines. However, there are three pillars that the article presents in this article: Purposeful search, effective organization and collaboration, and sharing and making sense of information. Understanding these pillars will take students to new levels of ability when using any type of search engine.

I found Diigo to be very interesting. It is a starting point to teach students how to organize and collaborate while searching on the web. This bookmarking tool uses “tags” to organize sites and images from the web. What I liked best about Diigo was that it can follow the student from elementary to college and so on! This is wonderful to add resources on specific classes, topics, or even things on a specific major in college!

With the new Common Core standards and internet being a main source for research, it will be crucial for me to teach my children how to properly use the internet web addresses to find proper web sites, not to just pick the first website and look for the answer. Having a good foundational knowledge could take social medias such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ and have a rich learning resource in result!

Introduction

     Hi! I'm Caroline Macdonald and I'm 23 years old. My major is Elementary Education. I'm endorsing in math and reading. I'm entering my senior block semester of the teaching program and will be graduating in Spring 2013. After I graduate, I want to teach kindergarten. I was raised in Picayune and live there with my boyfriend, Keith, and his two children , Austin and Ashlyn. My whole world revolves around them, their activities (baseball, softball, and dance), my family, and school. When I'm not with my family I manage a tanning salon in Picayune-Sun City Super Tans. My hobby is competitive dance. I have danced with my academy for 20 years. I also danced from 9th grade through my sophomore year of college.