My EDM 310 Blog Assignments are Now Complete

Dear Classmates,
I regret not meeting each one of you this semester. There were a few of you with whom I chatted with each class period and formed a friendship with. I want to say thank you to every classmate that helped me when something was not clear to me. My journey at the University of South Alabama College of Education has just began, so I am sure I will have a chance in another semester to get to know everyone. Good luck on all of your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
Shannika W.
:-)

Things I learned this Semester

I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience in this micro computing class. I think Dr. Strange is an excellent instructor with a progressivism type approach to teaching. He believes in serving as a coach and students learn best by doing hands-on activities. This semester, I learned the many advantages of GOOGLE!! Anything that can be done in Word programs can be done in Google...FREE!! This semester, I learned how to create a website, calculate payments, interest, and monthly rates on loans, subscribe to a blog, and create an igoogle page. All of these thing I learned in this class will be beneficial to me as a future teacher. I can use blogs and my website to keep students and parents up to date with classroom assignments.
This semester in preparation for my final exams, I viewed Dr. Strange's instructional videos. The videos were extremely helpful because they were so thorough. I think the videos would be beneficial to his future students for reinforcement. I would not like them to be the sole method of instruction though because that would defeat the whole purpose of coming to class. When I was in nursing school they made us watch videos on mediasite and they served as an instructional method, and we rarely learned anything in class. I hated mediasite and never benefited from it. However, I appreciate the time and effort Dr. Strange put into the videos to help the students.
~Thanks for being a great instructor/coach Dr. Strange!!

Trusting Wikipedia

I do not think Wikipedia will and can never be a trusted source for information. Throughout my life, I have been warned to believe half of what you see and hear and none of what you read! Mostly, the older people telling me this was referring to newspapers and tabloid type magazines. I think everything on the internet has been jeopardized at some time or another. Whenever I have searched for something on the internet, hundreds of links come up. Sometimes, I click on two or three just to see the discrepancies of each article. Even if and when you are at home using your personal computer, I believe someone is always watching and that is how the FBI catches up with child molesters and others participating in online illegal activities. I am so afraid of banking online although they claim it is safe and secure because of these reasons. People should just use Wikipedia as another reference source and always do follow ups on the information obtained from the site.

Growth vs. Fixed Minds

The study done at Stanford University was very interesting to me. I now see that it is true, whatever you believe will come true. If we believe we can, we are right. If we believe we cannot, we are right. When the teachers at Stanford has these kind of attitudes and conducted research on two groups of students, my believe was only verified. When we have a group of students that are made to believe that their brains can learn continuously and every time they learn, the brain's neurons branch together making more pathways and connectiions, the students strive hard in everything they do. Moreover, when students believe they are born with dead brains, that is the attitude they have throughout their school lives and no one can tell them different.

I have learned that as a future teacher, postitive exoectations is a must. If we do not believe in and have faith in our own students, we cannot and should not expect them to have faith and believe in themselves. As a teacher, during the first days of class, I will let my students know that they will all be successful and we will work as a team to make sure this is true. I will believe in every child in my class, no matter what their file folder says about them.