Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Blog Reflection

Blog Reflection 

       Sometimes, no matter how busy or hectic your life is, you have to sit down and make room for inner reflection. I gave myself several New Year's resolutions this year. Two of these included becoming a more active reader and a more active writer. I am happy to say that I have made progress with becoming an active reader. I am sad to say this not the case for becoming an active writer. This blog assignment made me realize how far I have to go when it comes to balancing my student life and work life. Working two jobs plus three master's degree classes isn't an easy task. However, if I had organized things and paced myself better, then my blog would have looked nicer and been seen by more of my peers. I didn't use the reminder buddy system and my blog suffered because of it. 

     There were parts of this assignment I really enjoyed. I enjoyed talking about my time as an exchange student in Kinmen, Taiwan. I also liked the Wordless Wednesday post. Is it cheating if I reveal where those images are from? I went up to the Florida Panhandle this weekend and visited some national parks. Those pictures are from Falling Waters State Park and Florida Caverns State Park. I truly enjoyed my weekend trip to these places. I kinda fell in love with that area, to be honest.



     I realize I must continue writing in some shape or form. There are some Internet forums I frequent and I do do some blog like posts on those. Writing as a habit will help me become a better writing teacher to my students.

What I've Read

What I've Read- Teaching Arguments by Jennifer Fletcher

     This book taught me how to look at writing and how I can present it to my future students. The first lesson it taught me was that as a teacher of writing, I need to be able to show my students why we should right. What purposes are there for writing? Why should we pick up the pen and start? The book also explains concepts very clearly. An example of this would be how the book describes logos. That is a concept I have previously gone over before when I took AP Language and Composition in high school, but I feel Jennifer Fletcher explained it more clearly when she says that logos has to due with "the text", rather than simply describing it as evidence. How is text used by an author for an effect?

        "Teaching Arguments" also includes many great activity examples that teachers could incorporate into their lessons. Below are two examples-

“Directions to Students: Write a three- to four-page essay in which you identify, explore, and analyze your participation in an argument. By argument is meant a verbal or written exchange with one or more other person(s) in which you disagreed about something. This should be a situation in which you and the other participant(s) considered the outcome important (not an argument where you had little at stake, such as an argument about ice cream flavors), and you were both emotionally engaged.

     I like this activity suggestion because it analyzes purposeful, real-life discussions and provides opportunities to examine them through writing. I would consider using this activity in my class. I believe my students would take interest in it.

“Translating for Outsiders
Directions to Students: Think of a subject that makes you feel like an expert, or insider. This might be your favorite sport, a style of music, a video game, anime, graphic novels, a hobby, a job, or “digitalk,” like texting. Then use special “insider language” to express each of the ideas in the following chart. Feel free to use slang, dialect, emoticons, abbreviations, or jargon to express your ideas. Then translate exactly what your insider language means for an outside audience in the final column.

What subject are you an “expert” on?”

      Every student has something they are good at or knowledgeable about. We as educators often talk about promoting the diverse strengths of our students. This activity is an excellent chance to do just that. They can write about what they are interested in and become "teachers" of their areas.



Fletcher, J. (2015). “Teaching Arguments.” Portland, ME. Stenhouse Publishers

   

Open Post- Substitute Teaching Experience

Open Post- Substitute Teaching Experience

     Greetings Everyone-

      For those who don't know, I have been a substitute teacher for Brevard County Schools since the beginning of this year. Recently, I subbed for a Remedial Reading class at a local high school. This kind of class is targeted towards students who did not pass the Reading section on the FSA assessment.

      The experience subbing this class was an eye-opening one to say the least. From what I was able to gather, the class solely consisted of using a program called Reading Plus. It's a computer program that "develops all three domains of reading–physical, cognitive, and emotional–by integrating them in one personalized online reading program" according to the Reading Plus website.

https://www.readingplus.com/

    It would be an understatement to say that the students in my class dislike Reading Plus. Common complaints about it ranged from the reading material being very dry and uninteresting to the assessments being above the level of the reading material given. Perhaps we as teachers should take some things our students say with a grain of salt. However, they are our students and listening to their input and needs is one of the most important aspects of our profession. The site below lists some of the flaws and criticisms of Reading Plus.

http://www.cavsconnect.com/opinion/2014/10/08/is-reading-plus-worth-it/

  I definitely plan on doing some more reasearch on Reading Plus and whether or not I will incorporate it into my classroom. Do you have any thoughts or input on this program?

Tech Creation- FlipBoard

Digital Creation- FlipBoard



For my digital creation, I made a Flipboard of my Annotated Bibliograpy sources (the extra assignment grad students had to do) about Steampunk Literature. I hope you enjoy it.

-Check out my Flipboard magazine, Steampunk Literature- http://flip.it/8_4EcW


Wordless Wednesday Mood

Wordless Wednesday Mood








Sunday, March 19, 2017

Tech Post


-TECH POST-

1. Consider the terms in the Wordle below and these questions:   How do you live your tech life–personally? academically?  How does that compare to your students or your former teachers?

     If I were to compare myself to my students, I definitely do not use technology on the same scale as them. Today I was substituting a high school class and my students kept trying to use their phones in class. They are "glued" to social media. SnapChat is probably the most popular amongst my students. In my humble opinion, I think society today is too reliant on social media for communication. Rather than have real face-to-face interactions with each other, we perhaps spend most of our time glued to our phones and tablets.

     I myself am guilty in this sense. Personally, I am very attached to my IPad. I enjoy watching movies and reading electronic books on it. For academics, I really like using an IPad. It's a very portable device and I can connect a keyboard to it when want to type up documents. 

2. Tech Tools to Enhance Student Learning:   Follow the links below and some of the tools that I have used with my students- just a small sample. Think about how you might use each one to reach out to students, parents, or the community.  Choose one and write about it.

     I chose the VoiceThread app and tried it out. I like this app for several reasons. Your dialogue can be about the the images you selected. I like how it is an alternative to the traditional preparation of PowerPoints and showing them in class. With VoiceThread, you can use images and add your own voice to each image. 

    Teachers across many different core subjects would find VoiceThread useful. Mathematics teachers could use this app to create presentations with step-by-step approaches to solving equations. History teachers can create slides with voiceovers that explain the development during a time period. VoiceThread is a great tool for teachers because it allows use to target both visual and audio learners. For ESOL teachers, it is one of the many tools that can be utilized. ELLs can practice their speaking with it by making presentations about their home country. They can check their own pronunciation and teachers can use the presentations to see what areas need to be worked on. I would also use VoiceThread presentations and attach them to my classroom webpage for parents to see. Parents would be able to see my classroom policies and also be able to see samples of their child's work during conferences.

3. Authentic Tasks for Students:  Here are a list of a few tools that you can use with students to write virtually.  Why is this important?  What are the benefits? The risks?  Write about your favorite discoveries. 

     The first tool I took a look at was GoodReads. I have been very interested in Developmental Reading recently and am always on the lookout for new ways to help my students become more interested in novels. I like how we can share opinions and reviews on different books. This not only allows for writing practice but also for a fun way for students to share their thoughts. I myself saw several Steampunk novels that I want to buy since I have recently become interested in that genre. 

     I then checked out Memes. I never thought about this, but this could possibly be turned into a fun activity with my students where I asked them to make a meme based on Shakespeare or a some historical event. The only worry would be making sure my students do not make an inappropriate or offensive meme for the sake of being funny. 
     
     Lastly, I looked at Make It Look Like A Newspaper. You can use it to type up documents to make them into a newspaper format. I think I could turn this into a fun writing assignment where students would have to make an article about anything or I could incorporate practice with using evidence from other sources. Again, this kind of assignment breaks the monotony of doing a simple article. 

4. What Lies Ahead?  Check out what is going on in the teacher-tech world.  Review Jane Hart’s Top 200 Tool’s for Learning and see what teachers are using around the world.  I like to click on the tool’s that are “new” to the list.  What you notice about the tools that educators are using around the world. 

     Some of the tech tools educators are using nowadays are commonplace applications whilst others are ones I have not seen before myself. YouTube is #1 on the list which is not surprising. We can look up videos about many different topics and get visuals for concepts we don't understand. Educators and schools can publish videos and YouTube. It is one of the most widely used sites in the world.

     iBooks Author is a cool tool to check out. Sometimes we can find our class textbooks digitally and purchase them this way. I myself like to do that when I can (I purchased our class textbook this way). It is interesting to see that this kind of tool is available for educators. Some of us may end up authoring textbooks ourselves. Who knows?

     What I notice about these tech tools is that they have a variety of functions that all help educators. TurnItIn.com allows teachers to check for plagiarism. I plan on eventually getting GrammarFree, which checks for grammar mistakes contained in documents and emails. Zeetings allows multiple users to participate in web meetings that incorporate presentations. The main user can control the presentation slides to facilitate the discussions of a meeting. The uses for these tech tools are limitless.

5. The Thinking Matters aka Choose Your Tools Wisely:  Review this digital tool version of Bloom’s Taxonomy below.  Based on what you have done today and what you understand about Bloom’s Taxonomy, explain what teachers need to consider as they integrate technology?

     Tech tools have a variety of uses in our classrooms. However, teachers should know that "creating" is the most important use of these tools. If we can get our students using technology to facilitate their learning by creating things then we are doing our jobs as educators. However, it is us teachers that need to create material for our instruction. Afterwards, evaluating can come into the picture. Evaluating student progress and the quality of our lesson plans takes importance. Applying what we have created with our tech tools and utilizing feedback from the evaluation of our students, we as teachers can give students the good quality instruction. Although "remembering" is important, it is only one of the small areas of tech use that we as teachers should focus on.

6.  Based on your exploration, what do you want to try next? I only try to get good at one tool at a time. Currently I have been working on HaikuDeck and my next is FlipGrid.

     I myself want to try out VoiceThread and GoodReads. I plan on using VoiceThread presentations to provide visual aids to my ELL students and to create evaluation samples that can be given to parents and other faculty. I have been working on becoming an active reader these past few months. I want to use GoodReads and use my experience with it to guide future use with my students. 

Sunday, February 26, 2017

My time in Kinmen

The island I used to live on...


For this open post, I thought I'd write a little bit about the place where I studied abroad. During my senior year of my undergraduate studies, I did an exchange program in Taiwan. I studied Mandarin Chinese and East Asian History there. Taiwan itself is an island country close to China. 

  

My exchange school was actually on that small island that is yellow in the picture above. It's a separate small island from the main island of Taiwan and even though it is so close to China, it is a territory of Taiwan.

What I loved about living in Kinmen was how convenient it was while still maintaining the beauty and charm of a rural place. The environment is very clean and it is a beautiful place. First, check out this Facebook video that Yahoo Taiwan did interviewing my two American friends Bethany and Andrew Stewart. They live and teach English there.

https://www.facebook.com/YahooTWNews/videos/1842210959351306/?pnref=story

Many Taiwanese think Kinmen is a boring place since it does not have the leisure activities(nightclubs, bars, nightmarkets, etc). However, I think many Americans would really like Kinmen since many of us come from smaller towns. The environment is especially suited for outdoor activities. Swimming, running, and cycling are all suitable for Kinmen. However, one should watch out for the weather as it is very hot in the summer while being cold and damp during the winter.

I myself used the Kinmen County bus to get around, but you can also use taxis, bikes, and motor scooters for transportation. Here are some pictures of my exchange university, National Quemoy University. 

  









Monday, February 13, 2017

Spring Break...what to do??

--Things I Could Do For Spring Break--

Hello everybody,


     I apologize for the late post. Honestly, I have been thinking about Spring Break a lot. Spring Break is coming up upon us and I still am not sure I will do. There's many things I would want to do, but I am not sure which one I should go with,

     I love travelling. I have been to several different countries. Recently, I have made it a of mine to do more local travelling both in Florida and other states. I went to Jacksonville and St. Augustine a few weeks ago and I especially enjoyed St. Augustine. 








The second photo is the oldest wooden schoolhouse in Saint Augustine.I really enjoyed downtown St. Augustine because it's a good location that contains a lot of Florida history and it is also easy to walk to different locations since everything is relatively close by. Flagler College campus was also stunning. Apparently the main classroom building was originally a hotel. 



I think I am going to try and talk my friends into talking a trip up to St. Augustine. I did not get enough time to spend there a few weeks ago and that way I can do things like tour the schoolhouse and try some of the local food. 

What is everyone else planning on doing for Spring Break? Do you have any suggestions for local spots I can go to?





     

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Hello...

Greetings

My name is Tyler Buddington. I'm 25 and live over in Rockledge, Fl. I recieved my undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. For senior year at UWF, I decided to do something I had always wanted to do- to study abroad and become an exchange student. I studied for two academic semesters in Taiwan before graduating at UWF. 




Afterwards, I went back to Taiwan for a second time to teach English for over a year and it was that experience that opened my eyes to what I was I wanted to do with my life- be a teacher. 




If you asked me three years ago if I had ever considered being a teacher, I would have looked at you as if you had five heads. Now I am here with you all at UCF in the MAT- Secondary English Language Arts graduate program. My goal is to teach ESOL at a high school or middle school. I speak, read, and write conversational Mandarin and I am trying to learn Spanish. In my free time I enjoy running, swimming, and cycling as well as hanging out with my friends and family. I look forward to learning in this class with you all.