I've been experiencing the Monday blues tonight, so I decided to write a blog post in hopes of feeling back on the right track...so I am putting my brain to the test and am thinking about how important it is to brainstorm, especially when it comes to creating a digital story. Brainstorming can be a difficult skill, especially when you have a world of ideas and opinions. Therefore coming up with an idea to create a digital story can be very, very, difficult. When creating a digital story, despite the fact that brainstorming will likely be difficult, it is one of the most important (if not THE most important) step in creating the story. As teachers it is important to remember that some students need more stability and instruction than others, and that is why it is important to remember that many students will need to be given writing prompts and ideas. A creative writing prompt is one like this one: If you're interested, I have a few links for different random story generators. One you can get to by clicking the image above. Another way to give students prompts is by Googling "story themes", "story genres", or "story topics"...this will allow students who need that bit of support to have it, and will allow those who don't need the stability to get their creative juices flowing.
Getting students brainstorming helps them becoming organized with their millions of thoughts, or all of the potential thoughts they will eventually have. As educators we need to coach students to get here and to use their brains in many, positive ways, and brainstorming is one of these things! Finally, by helping students understanding and develop the skill of brainstorming, students will have an advantage to creating their digital stories...they will be one-step in the right direction! ...Now that I have preoccupied by brain with this blog post, I feel a little more positive and organized already. Happy Monday everyone!
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As a new teacher, I believe it is important to incorporate media in the classroom for many reasons. Below are 2 reasons why I believe this: The 1st reason: because students are likely surrounded by media in their every day lives outside of the classroom...at home, in the mall, at the grocery store, driving down the roads (billboards), when listening to the radio, etc. The 2nd reason: because as educators we should take advantage of media in the classroom and educate students on how to use it in a beneficial way, and educate them on the many positive things that media has to offer! As an educator, I want to change students' feelings about school, I want students to enjoy my lessons and want to come to school! By incorporating media and technology into my lessons, I can engage my students and make them enjoy the lessons I am teaching. In order to do this though, I believe it is important to teach my students to become media literate first. This meaning that they need to understand media and how to use it. In order to do this, I can use the media triangle to help teach students and help them become more media literate. Below is an image of a media triangle that I created in my media and digital literacy class in university. It includes many aspects of media, including the 3 arms that media literacy revolves around: media text, audience, and production. Want to know how to use the media triangle in your classroom? The hyperlink above (media triangle) brings you to someone else's blog where they have actually created media triangle posters dedicated to each division (primary, junior, intermediate). Post these posters around your classroom, or better yet, create one with your students! When you have this posted in the classroom, students are able to revisit it and ask themselves the questions on the poster to help them understand texts that they are reading online in the classroom. As educators we should be providing our students with the best knowledge and education, and we should be helping them become literate in both the offline and online world. By allowing students access to questions that they can ask, students will become better learners as they know that they are in a safe place and can ask questions, and they are provided with the questions to ask to further their learning in a certain topic of interest to them!
Last night I had the pleasure of going to a Future Aces workshop with my mother, also a teacher! The workshop was full of amazing educators of whom I learned a lot from! Although I was there for a short period of time, it was time that was valuable to my future teaching career. Above you can see some pictures from the workshop of some activities we did as a group, and individually. To start, I will talk briefly about the organization that ran the workshop. Future Aces is a foundation that was founded by Herbert H. Carnegie in 1987. Unfortunately Herb passed away in 2012 so the foundation is now run by his two daughters, alongside a great crew. Future Aces' purpose is to inspire youth as well as adults to become the best people they can be. It helps students see the benefits of being responsible, respectful, peaceful and confident as every day citizens. One of the Future Aces' mandates are to foster self-esteem and ethical behaviour by applying the Future Aces Creed. To learn more about their foundation, Creed, and if you are just genuinely interested in more information I have embedded their website link in the picture at the top of this blog post! One thing I found particularly fun, was an ice breaker activity (but could be used for any subject!) where the teacher hands every student a puzzle piece, and the students have to complete the statement on their piece with the statement on another piece (e.g. "always say" and "please and thank-you"). This is a way to get students to interact and collaborate. We then had to share one interesting thing with our partner that they wouldn't know about us, and then we shared that interesting thing about our partner with the rest of the people at the workshop. This would be an excellent ice breaker for students, and a great way for them to show positivity, kindness, and courage, even if it wasn't used for an ice breaker! At this workshop I learned how to have the confidence to speak in front of large groups. I learned that there are so many people that think in a completely different way. We did an activity where each table was given a piece of another puzzle (different than the first activity!) and it had an item written on it that is shown in the Future Aces Creed photo (see photo to the right) (e.g. the clouds) and we had to write on that puzzle piece what we thought Herb's message was through putting those items in the picture. Every group then had to tell the rest of the people at the workshop which item they got and their reasoning behind what they thought Herb meant. This item really opened my eyes to how everyone has different views and sees something different in everything! Once everyone went, the pieces fit into the puzzle to spell the word "aces" (refer to photo below!). I lastly wanted to talk about how most of the activities we completed last night at the Future Aces workshop were based around puzzle pieces and putting them together. This foundation really strives to make students become one, and become a team where everyone is collaborating with a positive attitude, setting an example for one another! This workshop was so valuable to my education, and I am so glad I learned the things I did!
Thank you Future Aces for allowing me to join your workshop as a student candidate, and helping me extend my knowledge and open my mind to new opportunities for my future students! Again, if any readers are interested in reading about this foundation, click the picture at the top of this blog to go to their website! Growing up, I always enjoyed looking at pictures whether they were in a picture book, a photo album, or on a screen at the dentist office! There is something that I can connect to when I think of photography and visual learning. Today's blog post is going to be about visual literacy within the classroom, and I'm sure you already know that I am going to mention something about visual learners...that just seems to be the way it goes when you are a teacher!
As a teacher, the quote "a picture is worth more than a thousand words" is really important because it can ultimately be used as a tool within the classroom. When thinking about visual literacy it is important for students to be able to analyze and depict different perspectives, emotions, understandings, ideas (and more!) that images are portraying. In EDUC 4000 we recently went out into the community and took photos using the many photography techniques (e.g. the rule of thirds) (see image on the left above) and then reflected upon those images to see if there was anything we could see within them. We then were told to look at these photos and try and find a specific letter of the alphabet within them, An activity such as this one helps students develop their critical thinking skills because they really need to focus on an image and think of the many things it could be saying. In the classroom, a teacher could use images for any project, or lesson. Using images to convey messages would be an excellent minds-on activity because students love looking at images (especially if they are visual learners) and they can focus on them to try and portray meaning and develop reasoning for this. The teacher can activate the student's prior knowledge if they have seen something in the image before, or if they have seen the image itself before. The teacher can also ask critical, open-ended questions, which gets student's brains warmed up, and allows them to think critically about what they are viewing and allows them to think outside the box, and be open minded to new ideas and possibilities about the image. Furthering this, it allows for students to improve their language skills in terms of predicting. Having an image that students know nothing about can allow them to make predictions and assumptions about what is going on within the photo, or what the photo is titled. Therefore as a teacher, I will be sure to include many images within my classroom, and my lesson plans because I think it is very important to help students become engaged and to help further their visual literacy and critical thinking skills! Resources Tryptofish. (2011). Wikimedia Commons. File:20090211 thousand words-01 cropped.jpg. Retrieved online from: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20090211_thousand_words-01_cropped.jpg *Yes, this blog post may be long, but stay tuned at the bottom for a sneak peak at my own digital story!*
In 21st century classrooms, it is important for teachers to connect through the digital/online world. Having connections online allows for teachers to share ideas, and collect new ideas. Teachers can open their minds to new ideas and new resources and use them to enhance their own knowledge. Teachers can use these online resources to create a more inquiry-based approach to learning for their students. This will allow you the teacher to have more fun planning lessons, and will allow the students to have fun learning as well!
I am a strong believer that we are always learning, as both children and adults. We may not even know that at that moment that we are actually learning something new. When teaching, we have to remember that every learning experience is different for every child, and every child learns differently. Some students are visual learners and need to see what us educators are talking about, and others are physical learners where they need to do a hands-on activity to understand the lesson being taught. Others are aural learners and need to hear what they are learning through speech or music. Myself, well I am a visual and physical learner, fun fact!
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