Kellie Grandquest's EDM 310 Blog

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Using Symbaloo as my Personal Learning Network, or PLN, has been a very neat way to see all of my Internet resources right in the same place. It is a great way to keep me organized (through labeling with colors) and also saves time so that I can easily go from one site to another with a click of a button.

My networks have ranged from personal to educational (and sometimes both). Personal, such as facebook allowed me to connect with my EDM classmates to discuss class projects and activities to help each other clear up any confusion. Educational tools included Google and Wikipedia and even new sites such as Wolfram Alpha. This semester, these sites helped me with research for ideas in this class and even in my other classes. Other sites such as YouTube were used for both educational and personal enjoyment. I was actually a bit surprised to see how many educational videos were up on YouTube. I knew that the amount of videos online were statistically outrageous but I guess I never wrapped my mind about all of the different categories of videos uploaded every seconds.

Symbaloo has definitely been a great tool to keep me focused. I have learned so much by using a PLN. I will for sure keep using it through out my college career and into my professional career where I will be able to share this resource with many other people.

C4K November and December Summary Post

In the month of November, my first post was on an Australian class blog. My assigned post was for their teacher's birthday. There was a video sent from an American friend to wish her a happy birthday through song. Her students made her a "blogging" birthday card. It was a great way for her students to see the benefits of using technology and I could tell through the pictures that she really enjoyed her day.

My next post was for Safa in Ms. Gaudet's class. Safa posted a short story titled "Love Between War." His stor was based in the middle east and about a child who was separated from his parents in a bombing attack and years later reunited. Safa did an excellent job writing the story. He used many descriptive words and it was generally gramatically correct. I was very impressed with his ability to relate to what is going on in the world today.

My next student was Marigrace in Mrs. Melito's class. Marigrace's post had three parts to it. In the first part, she described how to find the degree of a polynomial. The next, she wrote about her favorite way to multiply polynomials. In the last part, she wrote about the three things she is most thankful for. She did a great job describing the mathematics portions. Math can be a difficult concept to grasp and even more difficult to explain to someone else.

The fourth student was on our Special C4K student, Yasmine. In my assigned post, Yasminesummarized a book that she had checked out from the library. She did a great job hitting all of the main points without going into too much detail. She is a very talented young writer and I could see her going far in a writing profession someday.

My last student was Amy in Mrs. Huebner's class. Amy wrote her post on what she had learned about Christopher Columbus. She gave us the explanantion of how Native American came to be known as "Indians." Amy was very excited to tell about what she had learned because it was from a relative in the line of Christopher Columbus. It's great to see kids this excited about learning history when they are able to see how it applies today.