My C4T #2 was Dr. Wesley Fryer, an educator and researcher. His blog is full of posts summarizing conferences he has attended or held where the discussion topic is usually about technology in the classroom and/or how to help students reach their full potential when using their imaginations. I honestly enjoyed reading his entries and viewing his slideshow presentations because I found them to be full of resources and useful information that I could use in my own classroom in the future. Here are the comments I left him:
Mr. Fryer, Hello! My name is Catherine Stalvey and I am an elementary education major at the University of South Alabama. When I started this semester, I was anti technology in the classroom because I didn't like the possibility that it could decrease a child's ability to lead a normal social life. However, my view points have vastly changed, because I now realize that technology is actually enhancing the way our children are able to learn. I'm a human being and my teaching methods will always be flawed, but technology is hardly ever inadequate. My only concern is, what will we do if something crashes in the classroom? I observed in a middle school a few weeks ago and out of nowhere, the computer/Smart Board crashed in the middle of a lesson. My teacher had to improvise (luckily she's incredible at her job), but it made me wonder if you were a first year teacher, would it make teaching even more difficult if your resources were to stop working temporarily?
I really enjoyed the slide show you put together about improving writing skills with an iPad, and I thought your "Saturday morning cartoons" joke was hysterical. I would love to be able to use iPads in my classroom one day, and I will definitely look into the apps you suggested throughout this presentation.
If you would like to check out my blog, feel free - stalveycatherineedm310.blogspot.com
And I would so love a Tweet from you (I just started following you)! @cd_stalvey
Thanks for your time!
Dr. Fryer, This is Catherine Stalvey again, the student from EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I enjoyed watching your slideshow about the notes you took at this conference, and I really appreciated how many different places you found proof of your theory about visual note taking. I took a course last semester where my teacher required us to create a visual artifact journal where we were given prompts to write and draw about. We were supposed to draw the first picture that came to mind, then write words or phrases about that picture, then continue to draw pictures and write cues until we ran out of room on the paper.
When I saw your slides on visual note taking, this is exactly what I thought of! I have always been a visual note taker...although I thought I was just notorious for doodling on my notes. All of my goofy little catch phrases, weird songs, and silly pictures in my notes have always been the things that I remember the best.
Your concept of sticky learning was very insightful to me-I have a niece and nephew whom I love to teach new things to and learn new things with. When I saw your slides, I immediately thought of all the fun, interesting things I could help them learn! For instance, my fiance' and I are planning to build kites and take them to the beach to fly them this weekend. We are building the kites form scratch with my niece and nephew, and letting the kids paint and decorate them however they please. To me, sticky learning is learning in a way that is hands-on and memorable, just like kite building.
Thank you so much for revealing your notes and giving some great advice for future educators! I will definitely be keeping up with your posts in the future.
If you would like to check out his blog yourself, go...here
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