I am enjoying reading others' blogs and seeing the resources they have posted. It is so exciting to have resources that others have found helpful or important to them. One could spend days searching websites to find ones that suits their needs. Going through ones others have found saves so much time and energy. I sure appreciate the sharing of these (and I let them know by commenting). I also share site that I have found valuable. I hope that others will find some use out of them as well.

Wikki Page

Our Wikki group is staring to come up with ideas for our assignment. We have shared some sites to look at. Our job now is to discuss and come to agreement on what each section of the assignment and how to proceed. I am thankful that Tomas has set up our Wikki page and is getting things rolling. Thanks, Tomas! We should also figure out and agree on how we want to post to our page. I can see how it could possible get confusing once there are many posts on the page. There isn't a way to show new comments. Maybe we could always post near the end. Or at the end of whichever section we are working on. Using different color text might work. Does anyone have a good system figured out?

3rd Grade Learning Style Inventory

Hey! Success! I just found an inventory that looks simple enough for my third graders. It deals with auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:-f-N7B1lB80J:rp.bergen.org/cms/lib01/NJ01001874/Centricity/Domain/117/012%2520Course%2520of%2520Study%2520-%2520Learning%2520Style.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjA4wSm7XysOe0FGwOq9t_ra8wjSCN7vxDwu7hwwPgXsTfhBk6ndAYojJD-_9kVHJMyF-Rfaq8xBNsCEaiLYp9ekUpWyvwlkWc7C-O7StiBGv_diYKMRRclWgkqSkWhgiJAhtmz&sig=AHIEtbTPdqPkj4E0112B0NJbbFMtlshREA (I know, very long link. It links to an online sight to see the document. I was able to just download the document straight from my Google Search list. (Searched- “3rd Grade inventory learning styles”) This would give me at least a starting point. Depending on the results I could adjust my teaching to help those students learn in a way they can do their best. At first, I was thinking that I could do different groups depending on their styles. However, I foresee student wanting to do the activity the others are doing. Including all students, but giving them all different opportunities with different styles, I feel is a better idea. I am lucky in that I have a small class. (I started the year with 14, but am now down to 10.) This will be a great year to start to incorporate some different ways to reach my students. Of course, this isn’t possible with everything. Since I am trying to focus on math, I will do that for this. I already know where to start. Assuming that some score as auditory, I will use songs for learning multiples. Usually when I have third graders, I teach them a song that counts by sevens to the Happy Birthday tune. The kids love it, and I have students from past years tell me that they still remember it. It’s an effective first step in learning the x7 facts. My goal will be to find songs for other numbers as well. To incorporate the kinesthetic, I will find (or possibly make up on my own) some moves to counting by other numbers. Possible a head, shoulders, knees, and toes would work easily. This is exciting!

Tools to Help Me Learn My Students

What tools might provide me insight into the learners in my classroom and how might I use this information? The first step I took in my quest to find tools to provide insight into the type of learners in my class was to just review all about learning styles and perspectives. I found lots of sites with very interesting information. I bookmarked those I felt would be the most helpful to others in my Diigo library. Some I have posted links to on this page, as well as Twitter. Then I searched for tools (tests or inventories) that would be appropriate for my third graders. Of course, while doing this I took many of the tests. It was funny that my supposed learning style changed depending on the test that I took. I found some questions hard to choose an answer choice, because more than one answer fit me. Which probably explains why I got different results. In doing these, I did not find one that I thought would be appropriate for my class. In fact, I am having difficulty finding something that I felt would give an accurate insight into my students. Many of the questions I felt they either would not understand or would not be able to accurately answer for themselves. I did see one from the resources listed on our assignment page that my students could use. It was an interest survey. My students would be able to answer this accurately and I could get some useful information, if not an actual learning style inventory. http://teacherweb.com/IN/EagleElementary/MrsMoore/Interest-Survey.pdf From this survey, I could probably get an idea of which students are musical or kinesthetic. I could tell which ones are more social and which are more solitary. Learning their favorite subjects/activities could help me discover ways to reach them better in all areas. I did find however, that reading the articles I did find on learning styles, it did help me learn some ways to incorporate the idea of different learning styles into my classroom. I found not only articles that explained in many different ways what different learning styles are, but how to help students use their learning styles to their advantage.

Ack!

My apologies. When I pasted my last blog entry, it ignored the paragraphing I had done. It makes is so much harder to read.

Learning and Acitivites This Week

I have been working on developing my PLN this week. During a Twitter chat I suggested we do a Wikki group for the EDMA 658 class, since we were suppose to try to keep a math focus. I figured that would be a great way to do that. I found Tomas had set on up and joined that page. I invited a few people that I could find. (Anyone is welcome. I am finding it difficult to find people with the different user names.) We have, I believe, five people at this point. On that page I shared the sites that are listed below on this blog. There were very interesting reads about learning styles and perspectives (although not directly related to math). I guess I should stick with the idea and relate it to math. I am excited to be a part of this group, as it is people I have been in the math program classes since last summer. I look forward to working with them in a different way than the Eluminate classes we have been doing. One thing that is making it difficult to develop a PLN is not knowing who writes the blogs I am reading. I have added several blogs to my reader. I like that it posts the new posts without having to go to all the separate blogs. However, a lot of the time I can’t tell who is writing it. It is hard to tell even on some blog pages. I would like to focus more on the blogs of my PLN. As writing this, I am wondering if it is easy to tell who I am from my blog. My blog name is Donna’s Blog, however the site is under dmassin. I guess I best look into my own! We have been communicating in our other class, Data Analysis, Statistics, and Probability: Content and Pedagogy for K-8 Teachers. We have been posting our reflections on an article about Data Driven Decision Making and responding to others’ posts. I learned about a few programs that other schools use to gather and interpret data on their students’ learning. I am very excited to learn about these programs to see if it is something we could use in our school. I learned a new feature of Diigo this week. If you highlight a section of a piece of writing that you bookmark, those highlighted sections show up on your list of sites. You can see an example of this below, where I posted another cool thing I learned in Diigo- how to post to my blog things that I’ve bookmarked. I shared this learning on Twitter. In Twitter this week I have gotten into the habit of checking and reading through Tweets a couple times a day. This helps me by showing me what others are talking about and where to find their blogs and resources they share. I learned about Google Circles by reading Tweets. I was able to watch a video that explained them by going to a site Lee posted in a Tweet. I have a better idea what Circles are, but haven’t had the time to look into setting it up yet. Soon! A classmate suggested that I try Chrome for the ease of bookmarking. I have downloaded Chrome and used it some. I am bouncing back and forth between Chrome and Firefox as of now. Eventually I will choose which I like more. A benefit is being able to have your bookmarks even if you are not on the computer that you made them on. I am also excited to share Xtranormal with my 3rd grade class. They will get such a kick out of making a video. I need to decide what kind of assignment I want them to do. I may just let them play with it at first, and then later use it as a wrap up project to science units.

Learning Styes and Perspectives

• School of Education at Johns Hopkins University-A Classroom Panorama

  4 Teaching/Learning Perspectives

  • What I couldn't seem to do, however, was to translate any of them into classroom use without massive systemic support and effort-
  • t Aristotle proposed that anything worthy of study could be approached from four directions, inquiring into: The That, The Why, the If, and What it is or what it means (Ross, 1923/1995
  • that all these kids will be better off for having their natural learning perspectives recognized, honored and encouraged; and that they will be better off for having seen that there are areas where they can still grow (sometimes myopically called weaknesses), and further that such growth may be aided by learning from the natural strengths of others.

• School of Education at Johns Hopkins University-One Picture is Worth A Thousand Words: Not Necessarily!

  Edmond's Learning Style Identification Exercise

• School of Education at Johns Hopkins University-SOI Adds Perceptual Development

  Bridges program-develop cognition and perceptive

  • mainly within gifted programs, a paradox implying only the gifted require cognitive development.
  • For about 15 minutes daily during the middle 7 months of the school year, all students undertake SOI activities that develop the mental abilities which teachers assume each student brings to the classroom; e.g., attention span, memory and recall, comparison/contrast thinking, process orientation, symbol decoding, contextual comprehension, etc.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Characteristics Needed to be Successful in our MOOC

There are many characteristics a person will need to be successful in this MOOC. The first is trust. You will need trust that you will be able to be successful. To do this, you will also need to have patience and perseverance. Sometimes it is tempting to give up when something seems confusing or isn’t working as we think it should. When learning something new, patience and perseverance are invaluable characteristics to have. A strong sense of curiosity will be extremely helpful as well. You must want to learn to do your best. Good online research skills are also a must. You must be able to search and find what you need online and know how to quickly sort through sites that are not helpful. Two more that I will mention are related- being proactive and participating. You must be proactive in your learning. You are in charge of what you take out of this MOOC. Being a productive participant will ensure that you will get the most out of this experience. Finally, I believe that having an open and accepting mind will be very important to being successful in this MOOC. An open mind will help you to keep a good attitude while embarking on this new adventure!

Learning This Week

To begin learning about what a Mooc is, I Googled it of course. At first I thought a Mooc was a tool or a single website. It made a lot more sense when I found that it actually meant a Massive Open Online Course. Next, set about discovering the difference between a connectivist mooc and and an x mooc. From what I understand, an x mooc is more prescriptive. There are specific learning objectives. In a Connectivist Mooc, students are more in charge of what they learn. There isn’t set objectives, so much as topics to explore and research/share. I bookmarked the sites I found that helped answer these questions and shared them on my blog and Google Group. I also spent some time becoming familiar with some of the other terms I have been hearing so far in our mooc. PLNs for one. Professional Learning Network. I like how our Google group has been set up for us to easily identify those who would likely to naturally become part of our PLN. I have been posting on the K-3 group since I teach 3rd grade. It seems most likely that these members will have similar questions and experiences as myself. Besides learning the different terms and their meanings, I have learned a whole bunch about many different online tools. It was all a bit overwhelming at first. It wasn’t until today that things seem to come together for me. For some reason today, I was able to find out how to easily post things to and from Diigo, Google Groups, Twitter, and my blog on Blogger. Things just seemed to work today, whereas the rest of this last week everything seemed to be a struggle. I’m not sure if it was a service problem, or if I just had looked at everything enough for some things to sink in.

Link to my Diigo library.

http://www.diigo.com/user/dmassin

PLN

Here is a good site explaining all about PLNs.

PLN

Mooc Information

Here is my Diigo list of helpful sites on learning about Moocs.

Mooc Infomation

Introduction
by: dmassin

Well, my blog is up (again).  I had started on Wordpress and wasn't having luck loading a profile picture.  I switched to Blogger and was able to drag and drop straight from Photo Booth!  What could be easier than that?

My head is still swimming from all the new information this week.  I have joined Twitter and have been sifting through the information on there, reading the most recent tweets whenever I log on.  I started Diigo, and have been bookmarking sites that I found good information on and the sites we need for this class.  Organizing those sites is my next step.  I am curious, however, if using Pinterest would be better.  Many of my friends use Pinterest, and I have been avoiding it because it takes up so much of their time. I knew that I would get sucked in as well.   I am wondering if I should join in now, and use it for this class instead of Diigo.  Any thoughts?