BONUS: LEARNING ABOUT CINEMATOGRAPHY

This is a great website that teaches the basics of cinematography; it is an interactive and educational tool for anyone who wants to learn about cinematography. I have enjoyed and learned very much, but the quizzes were hard to answer because cinematographic terms were difficult to remember. I liked the memory game on the film terms, it was fun. I think this website has been designed for adults and not for kids. I have learned about moving the camera, camera angles, technical film terms, lighting and shot framing. This website could be better if it gave more examples in its explanations.

I have had a great experience navigating this website and I really recommend it. Learning all this information using only textbooks would be boring in today’s classrooms. In fact, it would be impossible to experience this cinematography lecture with out the usage of videos. Also, this information will definitely help us for the video project assignment.

COPYRIGHT

I believe that most people who violate copyright laws do it because of plain ignorance. As teachers, we need to learn more about our copyrights and how to respect them. Copyright & Fair Use Guidelines is a complete teacher web guide about copyrights. It gives us a lot of information about the do’s and don’ts of Copyright and Fair use for teachers. Although I found a little difficult some of the explanations, like the Fair use chart.

On the other hand, I have enjoyed the trip on the “Shakedown Cruise” at the link A Visit to Copyright Bay. This link was created to promote interaction and learning. It helped me understand copyright laws and fair uses. through a lot of examples; like the various cases that covered different copyright issues. It was a fun learning experience. Stanford University Libraries: Copyright & Fair Use also offers more information about copyright and a list of related links that we can visit to learn even more on various copyright topics.

Keeping it Legal, this link presents how important it is to know how to protect your content and “keep it legal”. A helpful detail presented was about publishing student’s work. I didn’t know that we have to get approval from the student and the family to publish any students’ work. As teachers, we always love to publish all the work of our students, but we have to be careful doing it. With all this information in hand, I will certainly be better equipped to defend my work in the future.

PODCAST: REVIEWS

I have listened to Sesame Street Insects with Jenny McCarthy podcast. The puppets interviewed kids and adults and asked them about insects, it was very funny. This audio podcast is excellent for preschool teachers who want to give an introductory class about insects and at the same time reinforce listening skills. When kids are listening they can imagine and guess through the amazing sounds, what is the insect that is being described. Also, ESL teachers can use this podcast as a quick transition to address vocabulary. I would use the audio podcast for listening assignments but I sincerely prefer it in visual content.

The radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd podcast is wonderfully done. This radio show allows your imagination to work and wonder what the character looks like. It has great dialogs and characters. These adventures can be used to introduce history topics of middle school students. I have enjoyed it! Storynory Stories for Kids podcast is appropriate for all ages. I listened to “Bertie and the lion” but there is a wide variety of classic and modern stories to choose from. It was an amazing story with a great narration, I recommend it!

I listened to one episode of Autism podcast and it was very informative. The podcast includes interviews and points of views of professionals and parents. I had an autistic student who was in an inclusion program. It was very hard for me at first to get through him, but I realized that autistic students need to participate in constant integration groups and not be isolated like many teachers do. The podcast showed the big social skill improvements of these students who were in groups. I recommend this podcast to teachers and parents who want to learn more about this disease.

Finally, I listened to (10 news) of 60-Seconds (Scientific American) podcast and I am glad I did. This podcast provides interesting and current science news in a minute. It would help to inspire our students to do more research of the topics that they like because they would see many different topics to choose from. It’s perfect to get high school students thinking and exploring beyond the everyday curriculum. I highly recommend it for science teachers!

PODCASTING

I have learned that podcasting is the easiest way to distribute audio or video files on the internet. As a Language teacher, I agree that podcasting can improve the oral skills of students. This interaction is very important because it enables them to enhance their vocabulary, social skills and to build new knowledge. That’s why I want to integrate podcasting in my classroom. I can create activities like making audio files because this will reinforce and help them to develop their oral presentation skills. It is perfect for foreign language learners! Students can use MP3 players to record interview assignments and then create their own podcasts to interact with other students. We can also create audio books, videos, reports, etc. Definitely, podcasting will create a fun and interactive environment in the classroom that will enhance the overall learning experience of students.

The FAQ: For Podcast Fans link gives us tips and information of what podcasts are and how they work. This information is very useful and easy to understand. Now I know how to find Podcasts, and how to make them! Podcast in Education link presents podcasting as a new simple method to motivate students to learn new things, to be creative and to share their knowledge with classmates and teachers, with anyone”. I absolutely agree with this. It also provides us with excellent samples of podcasts that we can use in our classrooms.

Making An RSS Feed by Danny Sulivan explains in simple terms what RSS is and how to use it. I would like to learn more about this article because there are more things I want to understand . It’s wonderful how RSS gives us the ability to share information and makes it very easy to pull in and format all the information. As a Spanish teacher I would love to create a classroom newsletter to share creative projects and photos of my students and to keep the parents informed about what the class is doing.

SAFETY KIDS

These links give us important advice of how we can protect our kids and students from spam, viruses and inappropriate content. We need to be sure that children are safe when they are online. The obvious solution would be to track the web pages that the kids are visiting, but nowadays children are so good with computers that they can erase their tracks. I think that it is more important and effective to communicate openly with children and establish clear rules about Internet use. This would mean parental supervision. Filtering tools may be helpful with young children, when you use the tools to complement, not replace parental supervision. As teachers, we have to make sure the students go to sites we have chosen and teach them to never share personal information over the Internet.

4Kids.org is a good and safe website for kids; it has funny games that promote learning and it also gives us advice about filtering software. Kids Search Engines by, Danny Sulivan, gives us filtering tips and a list of links that might be inappropriate for children. Kids Search Engines and Connectsafety.org gives us tips and advise on how to safeguard our kids; like detecting web pages that may seem safe, but are not. Safekids.com is another internet site that has tools to protect children, like alerting when children may be having exposure to inappropriate material, physical molestation, harassment, bullying, viruses and hackers.

The article, “A short introduction to the study of Holocaust revisionism,” by Arthur R. is the perfect example of why we need to check what children reading. This shocking and disgusting article seeks to "prove" that the Jewish Holocaust did not happen, calling it a “legend”. I wouldn’t allow my Elementary students review this article because it contains inappropriate material for them.

The article,” Teaching Kids to be Literate,” by Allan November brings to light the fact about the web as he states. Allan expresses how important is that children learn how to research, publish, and work with the Internet and other information tools. We need to teach our students not to trust everything they read on the Web. All of these websites have helped me to learn more about how I can create a safe environment when my students are using the web.

Finally, the Teacher Guide #1: Evaluating Web Pages gives us an excellent guide of how to select good resources for our students. Also this website gives us more links that we can use to learn how to evaluate the resources. For example, checking the age of the information, who is the author and who provide it. All of these websites have helped me to learn more about how I can create a safe environment when my students are using the web. Remember: nothing is more important than the safety and well being of our children!

BONUS: Project Basic Learning

When I teach I give my students different types of assignments like doing research on the Internet in Spanish and English, writing online journals, meeting in groups to plan and create digital media presentations. Also, the students evaluate their peers and themselves for collaboration and presentation skills using checklists. A few years ago, I used to spend a lot of time to create the checklist by myself, but now the work is much easier using the Project Basic learning (PBL). Wow I am using it! But I recognized that I need to learn more about how to do integrate more projects in my curriculum.

I used to assign my students working in groups to solve challenging group problems. During the process, my role was to guide and advise, rather than to direct and manage their work. I love it! The students get really motivated to work hard; they enjoy using computers. PBL is without doubt a different teaching technique that promotes and practices new learning habits. The students have to think in original ways to come up with the solutions to these real world problems. But most importantly is that every student has the opportunity to get involved either individually or as a group. PBL is a great tool that makes it possible for students to think actively about the choices they make and execute. As a teacher, I highly recommend to integrate it in the curriculum and have fun doing it!

Reflection about web activities & e Learning

“Word World” website activities is an excellent teaching tool for preschoolers that introduce them to new words through seven animated and funny characters. The constant presence of words, such as the character’s names, and the use eye-catching colors make this website very fun for preschoolers. I would definitely use this website in a kindergarten classroom by giving the students 30 minutes of free time to play with the website on their own. I personally know that Word World can provide fun teaching for children because my 2 year old daughter loves it! I rate it with 5 stars.

“Between the Lions” website activities teach young children the fundamentals of reading in a fun and entertaining matter. The many activities in the website promote reading and writing skills. As an Elementary teacher I can use this website in my class to promote phonics, fluency, vocabulary development and reading comprehension. I might go with the students to the computer lab and let them play around with the website for 30 minutes. I would then give writing assignments to the students where they would write in their journals their experience and what they learned from the games. I could also give the students homework assignments using the website activities. I personally don’t like too much the puppets but the kids do. Overall, I think that this website is a great tool for children to become successful young readers. I rate it with 4 stars.

“Cyber Chase” has a great website activities. I am bad in math and sometimes when I see the show it refreshes my math skills. This is an excellent website teaching tool that helps children look at math in a fun way; it also helps them to increase their logic problem-solving skills and overall knowledge. I always try to integrate some sort of math in my Spanish curriculum as long as it is related, but I think I couldn’t use this website for my Spanish class since it would require the students to sit down and exclusively learn math. That’s why I recommend “Cyber Chase” for Math teachers. I rate it with 5 stars.
One of my favorites learning sites for kids that I want to share is www.pbskids.org

E- learning is a valuable teaching tool, it is a strengthening component of most subjects’ curriculum; we as educators need to incorporate E-learning to improve participation and learning in our classrooms. As a Language teacher I can use these E-learning sites to work with sound and video files, and utilizing the interactivity of an e- Learning platform for homework assignments and quizzes.

Regarding the E-Learning for adults, I think that the Corporate e-Learning is a fun, motivated and interactive e-learning tool. I like the Team productivity manager effectiveness because it presents real situations and help how to solve them. This E learning enables business executives to become discerning e-learning investors and to create meaningful performance solutions. Michael Allen really creates and effective and motivational online learning. The e-Learning for kids are design to learn through movement, sounds, interaction and in other words fun! On the other hand, the e-Learning for adults is not exactly trying to entertain just simply train them by getting to the point quickly. I think that adult learners need to have a little fun too. That’s why I enjoyed to visit the E-learning library website.

NETS FOR TEACHERS

The NETS for teachers defined the fundamental concepts, knowledge, skills, and attitudes for applying technology in educational settings. NETS describe what students, teachers, and administrators should know and be able to do with technology to improve educational outcomes. Also expand this focus to include what teachers should know and be able to do "to promote students' abilities to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world."

I think that these standards are an excellent way to structure professional development; also we can use as guidelines for planning technology based activities in which our students achieve sucess in learning communication and life skills. Don't forget that we need to be prepared for today's students and for the challenges of a new digital world. These standards are key to educational progress especially if you aim, as we do, to strengthen future opportunities for all learners.

NETS for students

Technology is so much faster, smoother, and more reliable than it's ever been. We all have high expectations for technology, so it makes sense to also raise our expectations of students' abilities with technology -- both in and out of the classroom. The new standards speak beyond the actual technology; I want to see classrooms in which teachers maximize the knowledge of all these born clickers and MySpace minds, and learning environments in which we share the excitement of these technologies while learning together.

I have to agree, I think these changes are definitely a step in the right direction. The standards for the grades 3-5 and 6-8 are amazing. I'm going to follow these standards in a new Learner 2.0 class . I will encourage my peers to adhere to them as well.

Forum: McKinsey Report

1) The fundamental solution for a good educational system is to have the best and the brightest teachers. In order to recruit and retain them we need the compensation that other professional careers have. Teachers have their passions to teach, but unfortunately in the country we live in, simply surviving and paying for our bills comes first.
2) One of the fundamental problems with today’s education is the broad curriculum that we have. I believe that the principal of teaching something once and teaching it right is better than teaching many subjects that the students will forget once their bubble exam is done.
3) The best professional development, as with any other profession, is on hand experience. There is simply no better feedback than what you get from your more experienced colleagues and students.
4) I think that teachers need to have the freedom to adapt to their students. Being a teacher in the US means being a teacher to kids of ethnicities from all over the world; it is naïve to expect these children from various cultures to adapt to a one curriculum system. I believe that teacher freedom to adapt to their students need is fundamental in their educational success.
5) I think that teachers know their students’ needs better than anyone else and the California Content Standard is nothing but a barrier for a dynamic and adaptive classroom with their one size fits all curriculum standards.
6) The No Child Left Behind law was created with a more political rather than education agenda behind. Their policy’s over focus on standardized exams over actual learning is simply something that most teachers would be against.
7) I believe that class size is a huge factor in a student’s success. There is simply no replacement for the extra teacher to student attention that can only be achieved in small classrooms.
8) Being brought up, and knowing first hand the hardships of growing up in a poor town in Puerto Rico, I decided to become a teacher because I want to make a difference with unprivileged children since I believe that good teachers can have a lifelong positive impression on their students.
9) It was a great experience to listen and learn from a podacst. I think that this is great and free tool that teachers can use to vary and improve their curriculum.

A good Professional

I think that a good teacher need to have an excellent linguist and an expert knowledge of the subject area;
- communicates subject clearly; uses a variety of teaching techniques which promote learner interaction.
- adapts teaching to unanticipated problems learners may experience;

Also the teacher needs to helps learners to develop confidence, empathysizes with learners’ difficulties in learning and. A learner-centred approach to teaching and has a learning theory to inform teaching. Finally this professional
- constantly reflects on all aspects of teaching and learning