Week 10_Meir Samberg

Welcome Back!!! It's been quite a while. Today we will be discussing a  little bit about research tools. I am a big fan of using google. I think it is the most effective to use searching. I havta be quite honest, I was exposed to noodletools to use as a research tool for information, but I was not impressed at all. I still think that google is the best option for research.

One thing I was happy to learn about on google that I didn't know existed is google scholar. http://www.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html
For anyone looking to find academic article this is a very nice tool. I think it will be very helpful for me while I am writing my seminar paper.

Moving on, let's go to Power Point. Power point is excellent. I learned how to make presentations in 6th grade using power point and it has been useful ever since. It's good for pecka kuchas, good for ted talks, and great for teaching. However, now that we are in the 21st century we don't havta stick to just powerpoint, there are some other really nice tools such as Emaze, and Prezi. If you were to ask me my own opinion, I really like the structure of Emaze. It's very soothing to the eye to watch a presentation, and especially for those who have attention deficit disorders I think Emaze provides us with the perfect amount of distraction to help us stay focused.

Thanks

WEEK_6

Wow, what another interesting week. I really feel like I"m learning so much about the 21st century.

My first and favorite activity is the website which promotes debating. http://idebate.org/view/top_100_debates. I've already used this website to run a night activity where I am a dorm counselor. I gave the guys the topic a few days notice and split them up into groups of 2 and ran an official debate, debating the "existence of God." It was a huge success.
I could also see this being a great activity being used in a high school class.

http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/sc.cgi?A1=s&A2=1

. This is another great activity that I liked which can be used to help improve spelling. This is an activity where you choose your level of difficulty and are presented with 4 words. You must choose the word which is spelled wrong and then spell it correctly. Some of the words were very difficult even for me to spell, and I won my school spelling bee when I was in the 8th grade. Even for students on a high level, this activity would need to be done on easy when teaching this as an EFL.

Another website which I really enjoyed seeing was http://www.teach-nology.com/gold/langorg.html. This websites has pre-made graphic organizers. Graphic organizers are so important, especially for teachers. This website has hundreds of different types. When having kids write an essay on a book, there are some really great graphic organizers on this site that really breaks it up. Charachters, plot, setting. It's a very nice site. Highly recommended.

It was also very nice to see that google docs was recommended this week. I was happy to see something that I am already using and familiar with. Google docs is great for so many things, especially when trying to organize an event, and things are constantly being edited.

Another fun activity I liked is from this website. http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/Printing_Press/

This can help you with all sorts of ideas. If I want my class to make a newspaper I can show them this tool, and all the minor details have already been taken care of. They just need to come up with what to write. Such a great tool!!!

As always,
Thanks for listening.

Week 4

First of all, I would like to start off by saying what a nice lesson this has been. I loved seeing all these different types of ways, and hows, and why's of using pictures. Photofunia was a very fun website and I did end up wasting some time there. Using pictures is so important for our students and we really need to learn to adapt to that. As someone who is studying special ed and have done a lot of observations in the past few years, it seems that a large majority of our students would fit into this category. If you show a student a worksheet full of sentences that he has to fill in the blank, this can easily cause a lot of distress in anxiety. However, when you take that same exact worksheet, and fill it in with nice and colorful pictures not only does it take away the anxiety but it grabs their attention and gets them to start working. It's really such a great phenomenon. 

In one of the blogs I am following, he talks about keys for successful digital transformations. A huge key to success has a lot to do with what we have learned in this week's lesson. "Nobody likes change, but the fact is that change is at our doorstep." If you can't beat em, join em. So it was really nice to learn that when using Paint, i can use my own personal picture as a paintbrush. :). I'm definitely going to always do that! Now that we have technology at our footsteps, we can work much smarter, not harder, meaning to use it in a more effective and efficient manner. 

WEEK 3

One of the big topics over the last week has been all about Donald Trump becoming our new president. I personally don't know how I feel too much about him winning, and what he is going to do as the new President of the Unites States, but one thing for certain is that I"m definitely happy that Hillary Clinton is not going to be our next president. Lisa Nielsen, a blogger on education, was very curious about the turnout of events and how all of this is going to have an effect on American Education. Therefore, she decided to a little bit of research on how Donald Trump feels on education and found a few interesting things. In 2015, Donald Trump published a book, 

Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, where he lays out a specific policy in a number of areas including education.

So what exactly does a trump education mean? Let's try to find out.

He said he wants to spend $20 billion for some kind of federal program to promote school choice. He said he wants to abolish the Department of Education. He said that he wants to prohibit states from making schools gun-free zones.

So who knows, can we really believe Trump at face-value??

On top of this, here is a chart made by Lisa Nielsen of what Trump says he wants to see more of and what he wants to see less of.

More	Less
1) Standards
Personal / Student Success Plans	Common Core
2) Department of Education Influence
Distribution of Services	Department of Education
3) Standardized Testing
Micro-credentials / Certifications Portfolios	Standardized Testing
4) College Readiness
Focus on Workforce Ready	Focus on College Ready
5) Public School Students
Religious, Military, Corporate, Independent, Trade and Home schools	Traditional Government Schools
6) Student Debt
Colleges sharing risk of student loans if students don’t find employment.	Student debt
7) Student Under/Unemployment
Student jobs Majors that result in careers	Student unemployment Majors in areas such as liberal arts for those wanting student loans

Don't Believe Everything you read!!

Thanks to technology in the 21st century students no longer need to rely on teachers as their main source of knowledge. This gives teachers more time in the classroom to focus on other things which they find important. Such as working together in groups, and helping students build relationships. Students not have a much greater advantage than we did growing up. They have much more access to the world. As one of the other students in the course wrote, she read about students pen palling across the world which can be done in a matter of seconds when we used to have to wait a few weeks in order to receive a letter.

However, not everything is so simple. We must be aware of what now people are referring to as Digital Literacy. You can simply believe everything you read on the internet. Lucky for us there are sites used to be able to validate what people find online. Check it 
out: 
http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/information-literacy-resources/

Hi,

My name is Meir Samberg. I am very excited for this course. I am expecting to get into the minds of youngers kids growing up in this century. I'm in awe of the major differences that the new generation is growing up in. My little sister got an Iphone when she was 9 years old. Things are way different now!! Sometimes I get worried when I think about what will be with the new generation. They are so connected but at the same time they're more disconnected from themselves than ever. They don't know what it means to stop for a few seconds take an introspection on their life. I've always kept myself distance from these sort of things such as becoming a blogger etc.. My biggest concern in this course is that I may start blogging on a regular basis.