"Growth" vs. "Fixed" Minds - Stanford University Video Podcast

The podcast that we were assigned to listen to was "Growth" vs. "Fixed" Minds which is part of a Stanford University podcast series called "The Stanford Challenge: Seeking Solutions, Educating Leaders (Improving K-12 Education)." To visit the Stanford University iTunes website you can use the following link: Stanford University.This podcast discussed the difference between "fixed" and "growth" mindsets in learning. The first mindset discussed was the "fixed" mindset. According to the speaker for Stanford University, some students have a "fixed" mindset which means that they believe that their basic intelligence is a fixed trait. This lady said that this concerns students because they always worry if they have enough intelligence to complete a task. Other students believe they have the "growth" mindset. These students believe that their intelligence is something that they develop through life experiences and educations.

In order to try to help all students to develop the "growth" mindset, Stanford University employees set up a workshop with eight different sessions. Half of the students in this study received study skills and "growth" mindset classes while the other half received only study skills classes. The results showed that the students who were in the classes of just study skills made no improvements. Their grades continued to drop, and they were not motivated at all by the study skills courses. Stanford University psychologists believed this was because they did not receive the "growth" mindset lesson which teaches the students that their brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use. In order to prove their theory, the students were given an article about the "growth" mindset. After reading the article, the students learned how to apply this "growth" mindset when completing their school work. At the end of the semester, these students showed great improvements in their grades, and the teachers were distinguish between the students who had the "fixed" mindset and the students who had the "growth" mindset.

At the end of the video podcast, the students with the "growth" mindset were described as "curious to learn" while the students who have the "fixed" mindset just "want to feel smart." As a future teacher this affects me because in order to be a good mentor I also must have this "growth" mindset. The learning process never stops, and as a teacher I have to remember that my intelligence is still continuing to grow. It is very important for students to always be "curious to learn" and remember that their intelligence has no boundaries. As a teacher, I will always strive to be the best motivator for my students and remind them everyday that they can do anything that they set their mind to.

WGBH Video Podcast "What is a Planet?"

The video podcast I chose to listen to was "What is a Planet?" This podcast discussed the debate on how many planets there are in the solar system. While in school I was always taught that there were nine planets, but other researchers try to prove that there are ten or more planets. According to the International Astronomical Union, a planet is a body that orbits a star, has enough mass to create its own gravity, has a round shape, and has cleared its neighborhood. Through this definition, astronomers are saying that Pluto should no longer be considered a planet; it should be reclassified as a dwarf planet. Although this definition has been created by the IAU, there is still much confusion on how to classify planets because scientific understanding is always evolving. Because of this confusion, this podcast tells us that planet classifications are probably going to continually change.

This video podcast was designed for children in grades K-5 who are learning about the solar system and planets. As a future teacher in schools that are being based highly on technology, I believe using video podcasts in my classroom will be a very interesting and creative way to present a lesson. Podcasts like this one use research from many different areas to help students have a better understanding of what a planet is. Because some students are audio and visual learners, having video podcasts along with other types of technology, such as power points or classroom blogs, will help to meet the needs of children with all different types of learning styles. Before I watched this video podcast, I just though of a video podcast as a video recording of a teacher or other professional talking. Through watching this podcast, I learned that video podcasts can incorporate moving pictures, graphs or other images, and the speaker. Being able to use many different types of moving images or props in the video podcasts will definitely make the podcasts more interesting for children.

As as teacher, I will be able to use video podcasts to teach lessons on all of the different subjects: Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and English. I believe one big benefit of having this new technology available to teachers is that it will help teachers with make-up work. I have always heard from experienced teachers that helping a child complete make-up work can become a major headache. Through video podcasts, teachers will now be able to record their lessons and post them to a class website or blog so that students who miss school will not have to miss the class lesson. Another benefit of creating video podcasts in the classroom will be that parents or guardians will also be able to view the class lessons through the classroom website. If a student in the classroom is having trouble with a certain subject area, having class lessons available for parents to watch may help parents assist their children with homework or school projects.

EDM 310 Fall 2008 Podcasts

The first podcast that I listened to was a podcast by Erica Sledge, Ashley Cleveland, and Shyane Fant. To listen to this podcast you can use this link: Useful Internet Sites for Elementary Teachers by Erica Sledge, Ashley Cleveland, and Shyane Fant. The topic of this podcast was "Pick of the Day: Useful Internet Sites for Elementary Teachers." During this podcast, these ladies discussed three different websites. The first website that they discussed was http://its.leesummit.k12.mo.us/. According to Ashley, this website helps teachers to learn how to incorporate technology in their classroom and in their curriculum. Erica discussed the ALEX website. She discussed the different web links on the ALEX website, the lesson plans, and the distance learning feature. Last, Shyane talked about the http://www.teachers.net/ website. She liked the site because this site had ideas for all teachers whether it be an elementary teacher, secondary education teacher, or a physical education teacher. I believe that these girls did a great job explaining each of the three websites that they discussed. The only problems that I really noticed in the podcasts were the numerous uhh's and umm's. This probably just came from nervousness, so with more practice I believe these girls could have done a wonderful job.

The second podcast I listened to was a podcast by Tomeka Washington, Rosilyn Harris, and Marlena Marsh. To listen to this podcast you can use this link: Useful Internet Sites for Elementary Teachers by Tomeka Washington, Rosilyn Harris, and Marlena Marsh. The topic of this podcast was also "Pick of the Day: Useful Internet Sites for Elementary Teachers." Marlena first discussed http://www.rainforestmaths.com/. According to Marlena, this website allows students to learn math while also having the fun rain forest background. The next website discussed was the Alabama Virtual Library website. According to these ladies, this website can be used to search various subjects such as animals, plants, people, geography, science, math, etc. Another website these ladies discussed was http://www.brainpopjunior.com/. This website is a source for children grades kindergarten through third. This website covers subjects such as science, math, social studies, reading, health, and writing. Again, I think that these girls did a good job at covering the topic that was assigned to them. Problems that I noticed in this podcast were also the uhh's and umm's and also relatively long pauses in between some sentences.

Because I am also doing my podcast on "Useful Internet Sites for Elementary Teachers," I felt that listening to these blogs really helped me to better understand what I was expected to do. By listening to these podcasts, I noticed how nervous these girls were with the numerous uhh's and umm's, so I feel like the best thing that I can do to improve my podcast is to practice. Another thing that I feel like I need to do to improve my podcast is to give more credit to the used websites. I noticed that when these girls discussed these websites they really did not mention the name of the website very often. When recording my blog, I am going to try to make a point to mention the name of the website after every couple of sentences. The only other thing that I really noticed was the background noise. When these girls were shuffling their papers, the microphone picked up the noise, so when I record my blog I am going to try to lay my papers out so that I will not have to shuffle from page to page.

Podcasts

While completing this blog assignment, I listened to six podcasts. The podcasts I listened to can be found on iTunes. The names of the podcasts were SmartBoard Lessons Podcast, Kidcast, ConnectLearning, EdTechTalk, MacBreak Weekly, and This Week in Photography. Listening to these podcasts really helped me to better understand what podcasts were and how to create a script for a podcast. I now better understand how to navigate my way through a podcast, and also how podcasts can be used in schools. Podcasts incorporate many amazing new technology techniques that will be absolutely terrific to use when I become a teacher.

The first podcast I listened to was the Smartboard Lessons Podcast. This podcast was titled "Teachers Connecting 4: Students View of Edtech and Connections" by Ben Hazzard and Joan Badger. This podcast discussed the use of smartboards in the classroom. The main part of the posdcast that I listened to was a group of seventh grade students from St. Patrick's Catholic School. This podcast really reminded me of a radio show or a talk show. Students were able to tune in to the podcast and tell why they felt that smartboards were important for learning, and they mentioned tips for teachers who use smartboards. According to these students some of the features that they use on the smartboard include pulling textbook pages up on the screen, color coding work, using the available internet connection, and having much more visible work. A couple of the uses of the smartboards in their classroom included conducting lessons on the smartboard and viewing podcasts on the smartboard.

Second I listened to the Kidcast 59 Podcast titled "Beyond Passive Listening-Active Engagement with Podcasting" by Dan Schmit. This podcast had a little bit of a different setup than the first because there was only one speaker. The main focus of Dan Schmit's podcast was how to create a podcast that helped children become active while listening to podcasts. Schmit listed many ways that teachers could help their children become actively engaged in podcasts. The first idea he explained was creating a scaffold. He said that teachers could create an outline leaving out some key terms or details from the podcast, and they could have their students listen to the podcast to fill in the missing pieces. The second idea for teachers was to provide reflective questions for students to answer after listening to the podcast. Reflective questions should help the student form an opinion of whether or not they agree with the speaker. Third, Dan Schmit suggested that teachers ask for students to write paragraph summaries of podcasts or paragraph reflections after listening to different podcasts. Dan went on to list more ideas that could help teachers actively involve their students in podcasts. This podcast helped me to see how I could use podcasts as a future teacher in my own classroom. He explained many ways to create assignments associated with listening to podcasts.

The last four podcasts I listened to were also very helpful in helping me to better understand what podcasts were and how to better understand how podcasts are done. The EdTech Talk podcast I listened to was "EdTech Weekly 117" recorded on March 1, 2009. The main focus of this talk was the use of different websites by people of all different ages. Some of the websites discussed were twitter, facebook, and myspace. By listening to this podcast, I felt that this was a podcast that people could listen to to familiarize themselves with current technology and current internet sites. The MacBreak Weekly Podcast I listened to was "Episode 129: Cry of the Wild Woz." There were five speakers in this podcast, and the speakers main focuses were new Mac and Apple news. Last, I listened to This Week in Photography which is a podcast that focuses on different camera techniques, technology, and news.

In my opinion it was interesting to listen to how each of the podcasts were different from the others. Some podcasts have only one speaker while other podcasts may have many speakers and also incorporate interviews. The podcasts that I enjoyed the most were the SmartBoard Lessons podcast and the KidCast podcast. Each of these podcast had very good information and techniques that I feel will be very useful as a future teacher. By listening to all of these podcasts, I now have a better understanding of exactly what a podcast is and how all podcasts can be different.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture was a great lecture to watch. In the beginning of the lecture Randy tells the audience about numerous tumors he has located in his liver. Although most people would be absolutely horrified by this news, Randy Pausch was not. He was an extremely healthy man, and his ultimate goal in life was to teach people how to achieve their dreams. The three main points Randy Pausch covered in his lecture were his childhood dreams, how to enable the dreams of others, and how to use the information he was teaching to help you achieve your own dreams or enable the dreams of others. The first topic that he covered in his lecture was his childhood dreams.

All of the dreams that Randy had as a child, he set out to achieve. The first dream he talked about in the lecture was being in zero gravity. Randy did achieve this dream through a project he and his classmates did for NASA, and he said the feeling was absolutely awesome. The second dream he discussed was playing in the NFL. Randy, unfortunately, did not make it to the big time in football, but he did enjoy playing football as a child. He noted in his lecture that football taught him fundamentals and hard work, and it helped him learn important positive character traits such as teamwork and sportsmanship. Third, he talked about his dream to author an article in the World Book Encyclopedia. Again, Randy worked very hard to achieve his dream, and he was successful. He authored an article about Virtual Reality. Fourth, he discussed his dream of becoming Captain Kirk. Because he knew this dream would be extremely difficult, he changed his dream to just meeting Captain Kirk. He was able to achieve this dream, and he said it was very awesome to be able to meet his boyhood idle. The fifth dream he talked about was winning stuffed animals. Once again, he worked very hard and was able to achieve this goal. During his presentation, he showed many pictures of all the theme park stuffed animals he had won, and he brought a few on to the stage as giveaways. The last dream he discussed was his dream to become a Disney Imagineer. During Randy's first try to become a Disney Imagineer, he was rejected. Although he had hit what he called a "brick wall", he did not let this setback discourage him. He stated "Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things." Randy continued to strive to achieve his childhood dream, and eventually the good news came. He was able to go for a company he was working for and work in the Imagineer department on the Aladdin project. His job was to publish a paper about virtual reality pertaining to the Aladdin project. After completely his task of publishing the paper, Randy was offered a job as a real Disney Imagineer. He turned down the job as an Imagineer, stating that it could be overly stressful, but he continued to work as a consultant in the Imagineer department one day a week.

The second topic Randy discussed was how he could work to enable the dreams of others just like he had done for himself. As a professor, Randy was in the perfect place to be able to influence the lives of other people. The first person Randy was able to help as a professor was a student named Tommy. Tommy's dream was to work on a Star Wars film. Tommy worked doing undergraduate studies in Randy Pausch's class, but when it was time for Randy to move to Carnegie Mellon Tommy did not follow him. Tommy had achieved his childhood dream. He received an offer to work on the Star Wars films. In order for Randy to achieve his goal in greater depths, Randy Pausch created a course at Carnegie Mellon that was called "Building Virtual Worlds." To Randy's surprise the course turned out absolutely fantastic the first year. The students were extremely talented, and the course turned into a show for the entire student body and for parents. Many people were interested in the talents of the students in the "Building Virtual Worlds" class, and they would come down every semester to look at the work the students in the class had created. Through this course, Randy was able to show his students what it felt like to have work that people appreciated and enjoyed. All the students knew that they had made great accomplishments through their work in his class. After ten years, Randy handed his position down as the instructor of this course, and moved on to what he called "The Dream Fulfillment Factory." As part of the "The Dream Fulfillment Factory" Don Marinelli and Randy Pausch created the Entertainment Technology Center which enabled graduate students to obtain a two year professional master's degree in Entertainment Technology. In this program students did five virtual reality projects to promote Entertainment Technology. Because of the strength of this course at Carnegie Mellon, companies began writing contracts promising to hire the students who received their master's degree in this course. Two of the companies were EA and Activision. Again, he had achieved his goal because he enabled these students to fulfill their dreams of working in Entertainment Technology.

During the last part of his lecture, Randy Pausch talked about "Lessons Learned," and he talked with the audience about how to achieve their dreams and how they could help to enable the dreams of others. First, Randy discussed the role of parents, mentors, teachers, and colleagues. During this discussion Randy explained how these people can influence the lives of children and help the children achieve their dreams. As a good role model, these people can guide children during their younger years in life and encourage them to be all that they can be. It is the job of a good role model to remind children that they can do anything that they set their mind to. Next, Randy talked about many good things to do to help in achieving goals. Randy said everyone should always try to be like Tigger in "Winnie the Pooh" and be happy. He reminded people to never lose the child-like wonders, and he said people should always help others. Randy said that everyone should always remain loyal, and they should never give up. He said everyone should always tell the truth, they should apologize when they screw up, and they should focus on other people, not themselves. Other things he mentioned included finding the best in everybody, showing gratitude, always working harder instead of complaining, and always remembering that brick walls help to show dedication.

At the very end of the show, the audience learned something they did not intend to learn when Randy Pausch started his lecture. He had told the audience that they would learn how to achieve their childhood goals and how to help other people achieve their childhood goals. Although these are great things for people to learn, the purpose of Randy's lecture was something different. His lecture provided what he called a "head fake" which is a lesson that someone does not know they are going to learn. Randy Pausch said the first head fake of his lesson was that the people should have learned not how to achieve their dreams but how to lead their life. The second head fake was that the lesson was not really for the audience. He actually recorded his last lecture for his children.

International Blogs

The first international blog I looked at was Mr. Lamshed's class blog in Adelaide, Australia. Mr. Lamshed's class is the class from Australia that linked itself to Mr. C's class in Noel, Missouri that I wrote about last week. His class is an all boy class. Mr. Lamshed's blog was a blog that had a lot of great information about his class. Some of the things Mr. Lamshed included on his blog were videos, photos, learning links, notices and newsletters, and online tasks. When looking at Mr. Lamshed's blog, I was really amazed at all of the work he had put into his blog. Mr. Lamshed wrote at least once a week about what the children in his class were working on. He included everything from assignments for the students in his class to work on to videos recording what the students were working on.

The second blog I looked at was a blog out of Thailand. The name of this blog was Room 202's blog. Just like all of the other school blogs I have looked at, this class blog included videos, pictures, and information about what the children were doing in the classroom. The blog post that interested me the most was a post titled "Connecting with Canada." The basic summary of this post was that this class from Thailand was connecting with a class from Haultain Community School in Canada via Skype which is a free video conferencing tool. According to the blog post some of the things that the classes discussed over the video conference included temperature differences, class size and school size differences, and nationality differences. It was really amazing to me that these two classes could connect through technology to compare differences in between schools.

United States Teacher Blogs

The first blog I found was Mr. C's class blog. Mr. C is a fifth grade teacher at Noel Elementary School in Noel, Missouri. Mr. C had a great blog that had a lot of information. Some of the things that Mr. C included in his blog were class pictures, class videos, and notes from class lessons. The thing that most drew my attention on Mr. C's class blog was a post that linked his class to a class in Australia. Mr. C made it an assignment for the students in his fifth grade class to access Mr. Lamshed's class blog in Adelaide, Australia. Both Mr. C and Mr. Lamshed's classes were reading the book Holes. Mr. Lamshed had posted three reflection questions on chapters one through seven, so Mr. C made it an assignment for the children in his classroom to access Mr. Lamshed's blog and post a comment relating to one of the three reflection questions. To me this was absolutely awesome. It is great that technology has come this far in order to help students connect with students all across the world.

The second blog I looked at was Mr. McClung's class blog. Mr. McClung is a sixth grade teacher at Noel Elementary School in Noel, Missouri. Mr. McClung just like Mr. C had a lot of great information on his blog for the students in his classroom to see. Some of the things that he included on his class blog were slide show presentations, pictures and videos from school functions, and names of people in his class who received academic awards. The main thing on Mr. McClung's class blog that drew my attention was a post titled "Tulsa Update." Mr. McClung had to be absent for school to attend a coaching clinic, so he kept in touch with his students using the class blog. In the post Mr. McClung told his students that he was learning great information at the coaching clinic, but he also told them that he had been monitoring their behavior on the class live stream. The point of Mr. McClung's blog was that technology has now made life easier for teachers and substitute teachers. Mr. McClung was able to communicate with the class substitute using the class blog about instructions for student assignments, and he was also able to monitor how well the substitute was able to handle the classroom. This to me is another awesome feature that technology has brought to us over the past couple of years, and I think that it is great that more teachers are starting to use the resources they have available to them through technology.