Blog 7

Blogging this semester was a great way to just sort of casually sum up my thoughts for myself. In a way, it was almost like an online journal, however, it was a journal I could share with others, where they could either nod along with me or perhaps share a different experience. From my personal blogs, I categorize them as follows...

Professionalism: 3 http://amcmillanc547.blogspot.com/2018/02/pro-blog-3.html

I chose this one because I think it reflects my thoughts on more professional material

Design: 1 http://amcmillanc547.blogspot.com/2018/01/hey-everyone.html

I chose this one because I like how I included personal photos and a fun link to express myself.

Creativity: 2 http://amcmillanc547.blogspot.com/2018/02/pro-blog-post-2.html

This whole post was kind of a post on the creativity of teaching...I like my photo 

People's Choice Definition: 1 http://amcmillanc547.blogspot.com/2018/01/hey-everyone.html

This one has the best of everything...even though the subject isn't exactly education related. 

Overall, looking at the valued components we came up with as a class for blog posts, I feel as if I may have fallen a little short in the professionalism category. I wish I would have proved my thoughts to be more credible while pairing it with my voice. 

I choose to give my People's choice award to Victor's blog post #6 https://victorsincomparableblog.wordpress.com

Victor is always playful but professional in his approach to diving into his ideas. I love the language and the professional quality that it holds. 

Blog post #6

Testing out my multimodal skills was more fun than I thought it would be. I used iMovie and it basically walked me through every step. All I had to do was find a song on my phone that I wanted to use for the audio and it was easily accessible since I was working with all of my Apple programs. The next step was to just choose the photos I wanted to use, and those were on my phone as well. Details that I had a little trouble figuring out were how to add text...there weren't any clear edit buttons for that, but I eventually figured out that I just had to click on the photo that I wanted the text to appear on in order to do so. This project was just a fun project, so I don't know how my techniques could drive learning, but the song is comical along with the photos, so I guess you could say that it's the attempted comedy that drives the video...along with the cute pictures of my dogs. 

Blog post #5

   My experience with digital storytelling and multimodal composition is limited. It was the year after I left that students in my school district were all given Chromebooks to take home with them to work on schoolwork and to do their projects on. Because my teachers couldn't guarantee that their students would have access to technology at home to work with tech, I never had a lot of assignments that made them necessary. Apart from this reality, I would have to say that the most interesting program out there at the time to do anything academic on was probably PowerPoint...maybe Prezi, but that program was a pain in you know what to figure out.

YouTube

   After Viewing the course website examples of multimodal composition, the ones that stick out to me the most are the book trailers and the digital storytelling. Although writing is an important skill to learn, I see how it could be important to encourage students to use these forms of learning as well as it gives them a different way to express what they have learned and what they know. Often times the struggle with teaching writing is getting kids to say what they mean--they can't figure out how to say it, but with book trailers and digital storytelling, those forms of assignments give students the opportunity to show what they know. These activities could be used as a pre-writing activity as it helps students to pick out what's important and it gets them put them in sequential order. This is exactly what writing does, however, students are more likely to be able to put what they know into something of a visual expression easier than they would be able to put what they know first into writing.
   If we can get kids to easily do the process that we want them to do one way, it'll make it that much easier for them to convert it into an academic style.

Blog Post #4

To be honest, after working with kids from MLS high school I'm a little scared. Out of 10 students that I was assigned, only two of them seemed to be sending me work, and of those two students, their work isn't exactly spectacular. In my college courses at UWM, I've been given some instruction and some resources on what to do when kids can't read...but what if they won't read or they refuse to read? What if they refuse to do anything for that matter? I can see how a teacher can get burnt out quickly...in an educational environment, there needs to be an effort made with both the teacher and the student. I feel like I don't have job to do, or that I can't do it well if my students aren't giving a better effort. I'm not in a classroom in front of these kids, so I can't really foster a personal relationship with them, I'm not sure if that would make any difference--would they let me build a relationship with them? I wonder how much of my being able to teach students will depend on my ability to reach them? Will I have to be responsible for their desire to learn as well as helping them learn? When kids don't want to learn... <----Link that talks about to get kids motivated to learn. Alright, but I just also have to add that I imagine that Mr. Harvil does care about his students and wants them to want to learn just as much as any other teacher would want their students to learn...so how should teachers respond when they literally feel like there is no hope of getting a student to respond at all? I was given a random 10 students...only 20% of them are even putting forth an effort...he probably has 100+ students...that's just scary.

Pro Blog #3

   My personal writing process has never really been exactly traditional. I've never been a fan of outlines so much as I am a fan of grabbing a sheet of paper and running with any idea that comes into my head. I specifically remember actually, in 9th grade my teacher at a parent-teacher conference, (I went with my parents), said: "Allysa has a lot of good ideas, but it seems she gets carried away with what she's trying to say and ends up vomiting everything she has in her head onto the page". That stuck with me, and I realized then the importance of a focused idea instead of many ideas, and to achieve that it required organization.
   So in tenth grade, I started using outlines more and really thinking about the purpose of what I was saying and if how I was saying it reflected that purpose. Becuase of the "vomit comment" (as I refer to it), I was able to realize that not everyone can see inside of my head and see the pattern of my thoughts; I learned that I had to spell it out to my reader. This was also when I began to write in a very formal way, however, once I began eleventh and even twelfth grade Google Docs became a very big thing and taking time and care to think of the perfect words to write on a physical sheet of paper became a thing of the past.
   Typing my papers became a time when I no longer worried about having to erase what I had written if I didn't like it. I admit that sometimes I miss the serious and conscious effort that existed with a paper and a pencil, but typing my paper meant that it was also more likely that I would revise my paper. For me, writing out my paper by hand made me feel like it was my absolute best effort...and it probably was my best effort, but it wasn't necessarily my best. Because typing is fast it makes me feel better about "re-doing" my work...even though it's more about improving my work.
   What was even better was when Blogger came along, however. Blogger created this really casual place where I felt as a writer that I could have a voice and a personality and an opinion. Writing and making something that I think other people would enjoy reading is really big with me right now. Especially as I get to higher levels of education and I'm forced to read these stuffy articles that nearly put me to sleep...it makes me want to be a writer that can get my point across in both a smart and interesting way.

Pro Blog Post #2

Without my phone I feel cut off, I suppose that sufficiently describes my relationship with technology. If I'm not texting, well then I'm on Facebook, Pinterest, or--okay Facebook. I post status's, videos, and comments on Facebook as a means of communication for many different things. I have a work page to communicate with co-workers, I have a sports page to communicate with the members of my cheerleading team, and I even once had a classroom page where questions could be posted. It's incredibly convenient, interactive, and enjoyable. SO why not use it in classrooms? Well, one must consider resources...especially in an urban school, it's important to consider the funds of the school, as well as the funds of the students personally. That's a potential roadblock, as well as the probability of students abusing the privilege of such devices. The most important thing to consider is if there are the resources at hand...would the negatives of those resources outweigh the positives? I think that technology can definitely be useful...for example...in one classroom there was a screen that was upon which students could ask questions by texting to a certain number...this allows for the lecture to go on interrupted, and for students to anonymously ask questions. Technology can be so cool...we just have to figure out how to use it wisely.

https://ideas.ted.com/7-smart-ways-to-use-technology-in-classrooms/