Randy Pausch in Last Lecture

In Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, he goes into great detail about how your dreams should not only be specific but how you should go about achieving them and making them real in your life. I love the way Randy Pausch goes about lecturing. He is an amazing speaker and is very encouraging. One thing I loved about his lecture is how he spoke of his inspirations and the people that encouraged and inspired him along the way. This is very important in every one's life. It was great how Pausch was so positive through his entire speech after dealing with such life threatening illnesses. After all his downfalls he his still focusing on bettering other lives and influencing individuals to go and achieve their dreams.
It is so exciting to know there are still instructors giving lectures and encouraging words to our teachers and students. We need as much encouragement and motivation as possible. Every lesson we teach to our students will be a learning experience to ourselves. I love the term "brick walls" Pausch uses. Mr. Pausch states,"Brick walls are there for a reason...not to keep us out, but to let us prove how badly we want something." I definitely believe these brick walls are there to teach us lessons and show our students that you have to live and learn from our mistakes. Letting our students see that we have had struggles ourselves and didn't let the "brick wall" bring us down could help them with their struggles in school and everyday life with their peers and parents. It is my main concern to teach my students some type of strong foundation to keep them positive and wanting to learn.
I hope one day in my future career I can contribute to students and other facility members the way Mr. Pausch has done in his studies and teaching experiences. He is such an admiration in his everyday life and his career.

My PLN Report

The PLN idea is amazing!! I would never imagine we would encounter this type of learning in this class. Learning new ways to network is such an awesome experience and has taught me so many new ways to teach my class with technology. Teaching is looking better and better with each new topic that I learn. Whenever I feel like we have learned so many things about networking, there is something else you guys have in store for us. It is overwhelming in a sense, but how wonderful to be able to talk and learn from other students all over the world. We are learning some amazing tools to show our students in the future. I never imagined that learning could be so interesting and so much fun. I am sure that my future students will feel the same. The only things I would say were in my PLN when starting this class was Facebook. Now the list could possibly go on and on now that I am learning something new each day from the class blog and in the class room. When I become a teacher in the future, I hope that the networks in my PLN include: Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Podcasting, Skyping, and more. The use of all these networks will not only enhance the lives of my students, but will help me learn more from my students and teachers from other states and countries. I am also hoping that this list will grow and that I will become familiar and acquainted with more networking sites that will improve my teaching technology and my student’s outlook on the world.

A Day in the Life: Vacations

Dr. Alice Christie's Discoveries

Dr. Christie's entire website was so inspiring. There are so many ways teachers can use technology to better their teaching and their students' learning. I hope that in my future, I will be able or have the oppurtunity to enorperate some of these options in my teaching curriculum. This site provided so many resources for all teachers grades K-12. Any teacher or future educator could look up this site for information about effective technology to use their classroom. I think it would be an awesome idea to require teachers to learn and watch podcast like Dr. Christie's. As a future educator, I also think it would be a great idea to "buddy up" with a co-worker or a teacher who has been teaching for many years to watch these together. As a younger educator, I may know more about technology and they would have the experience of dealing with students.
Because technology is growing as such a fast pace this would be an amazing oppurnity to learn from each other and more about technology and using it in the classroom. It is also my duty to learn as much about technology as possible. I know that I will learn many things from my students, but I also want to have the upper hand so that I'm able to teach my students the effectiveness of this work and how it will help them succeed in the future as well as help develop their practical, critical, and computer learning skills. Using the kid-friendly technology and tools such as GPS and Google as mentioned on the site will be a fun and exciting learning experience.

ITUNES U

The ITunes University was great!! I think it’s a really great source of information for pod casting. I’m really surprised that I haven’t known anything about pod casting and blogging to this degree. I am really glad this class is required. Learning from these videos and articles is really going to enhance my classroom curriculum. I really like how many of the class information is offered on ITunes. There are many students who can’t afford these Universities, but have the option of learning about these classes through ITunes. There are many high profile colleges that are offering classes on ITunes like Duke, Yale, and Oxford. I also think it’s nice that some professors rather do this than have a lengthy class discussion. I’m sure many students who have went to class for many years would have chosen this feature. Even though a degree is not offered for these classes, it is still very interesting to listen in and learn what fellow students are learning at these different Universities. I believe that many more professors should look into doing this. They may get some great feedback from it.

Learning From Mr. Clung

Mr. Clung’s article has many important objectives about getting started as a teacher and in the education field. When I watch videos and read articles like this it really gets me excited about my first year of teaching. I know that my first year will not go exactly as planned, but that it will have many learning experiences. I’m sure that all the “fun stuff” that I expect to happen will not, but that is part of teaching. As a teacher, I know I will need to be flexible and ready for the unexpected. Being prepared for the worst or having to change my curriculum is part of the job. I also know that communication is very important. Knowing my students on a professional, but personal, level is going to help us learn from each other.