Project 4, C4T #1

On Student Achievement

This week's C4T, I was assigned to On Student Achievement by Brian Bennett. Brian now works at TechSmith after teaching science for 4 years. In his post he talks about a pedagory, which is the art or style of teaching. He says, "Student growth requires four actions: quality experiences, difficult yet specific goals, meaningful feedback, and the awareness of a teacher." He says that technology can have an  impact with feedback but also teacher awareness because this eliminates time and communication barriers. This occurs when a teacher understands how to teach and the technology is a tool to assist in that process. So, technology is important but it has to use in a meaningful way. 

My reply:

Hello! My name is Kelly Campbell and I am a student at the University of South Alabama in EDM310. It is a required course for all education majors here at South Alabama and it teaches us the new technology that is already in schools or will be in the schools. So, this course is helping us, future educators, learn the communication barriers and have meaningful feed back for our students. You stated, “Technology can impact the learning process in many ways, and I would like to argue that the Teacher and Approaches (Pedagogy) have the highest potential to be powerfully affected.” I completely agree with what you are saying, technology can either help the learning process or it can hurt it. For example, if you walk into a classroom and students are playing an educational game on the computer, I do not think that is hurting them because they are having fun but also learning. But, I also think, technology can be harmful because in younger classrooms, like preschool, the students are playing with ipads and watching “educational” TV. I do not agree with younger students using technology because at that age they need human contact. “Cuban (1986) defines technology as “any device available to teachers for use in instructing students in a more efficient and stimulating manner.” With preschool and kindergarten age classrooms we should listen to Cuban. I enjoyed reading your post; it opened my eyes and helped me see technology in new ways. I would love for you to come and read my blog: http://campbellkellyedm310.blogspot.com or if you are interested in reading the other EDM blogs, please feel free to check out our class blog: http://edm310.blogspot.com also, I will be summarizing your post and the comment I leave the week of February 4 on my blog if you want to read it. 

Flip Flop and a GIMP Bump Life

This week in Brian Bennett’s blog Educator, Learner, I read a post, called Flip Flop and a GIMP Bump Life He says he was doing a debate with Nate Langel at a NovaNOW conference. He explains how he was working on the graphic that he used as a promo for the conference. His topic is called Flipped Learning and he will be discussing the pros and cons of our viewpoints. He starts off by finding an image of a pair of flip flops on the internet. Then he wanted to add words on the flip flops. He did this through GIMP. He was also able to change the font, add texture, and color to the words. 

My Reply:

This is very insightful. I have never been to computer savvy but I know the basics. I have never heard of the program GIMP. Being a future educator I probably need to learn more about this program so I can make graphics to help my students learn.  Obviously, I do not have any tips on how to use this program for you right now but I do think your graphic looks great. But like you said, just some more fading around the edges to match the texture and I think you will have an outstanding graphic.