Comments4Kids Week 9

This week I had the same student I had for my comments for kids assignment last week. I revisited James' blog and he has written a comment back to me.

He writes, " Thanks Lauren! Yeah organisation helps a lot in wrting through lots of ways like what you just said not making the reader confused. I’m also looking foward to reading your blog."

It is so great to see students give feedback. I hope that James keeps up the good work and I wish him luck with his organisational skills.

Comments4Teachers

For my comments for teachers assignment I was assigned to John Spencer's blog. The first post I commented on was titled "I am still the Teacher." In this post John shares that he dislikes the idea of "co-learning". He goes on to say that teachers still need to be leaders. Here is the comment I left for this post:

"First of all I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly. My favorite teacher in high school was not the one we as students felt was "one of us". Instead it was the one that I could turn to for guidance and criticism when needed. I'm Lauren Germany, I am currently taking EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I am majoring in English and Secondary Education. I will be following your blog as part of an assignment. Here is a link to our class blog: http://www.edm310.blogspot.com/ I will also include a link to my own blog. I will be posting my summary of this assignment to my blog in the next few days. I hope you get a chance to read it! http://germanylaurenedm310.blogspot.com/"

The second Post was titled "Who should we Blame?" and focused on how teachers blame parents, who blame teachers, who blame city officials and so on. We are so busy playing the blame game for why our children aren't successful, that we aren't doing anything to fix the problem. Here is my comment:

"I love your viewpoint. It is true that we blame people for a child's "lack of ability". When I worked in daycare, the parents would blame us when their children didn't do there homework correctly. The children had us to help with homework, but to me, if the parents care so much about it, they should check their children's homework themselves and help their child to succeed. At the end of the day if your students have been able to learn something new, then you have done your job."

The final post was titled "Changing how I spend my time" which focused on how he has had to change how much time he spends focusing on certain things, like grading papers. He says that he spends more time giving feedback rather than just giving grades. Here is my comment:

"Thank you for posting this. I am still working on becoming a teacher, but your change with your time management helps me figure out what to expect. I'll have to keep this post in mind once I start teaching."

I loved reading John Spencer's blog posts. They were enjoyable to read as well as enlightening. I hope you subscribe to his blog and follow him; I guarantee you will learn something!

Last Lecture

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

This video has been by far the best and most rewarding videos I've watched for this class so far. Dr. Randy Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is dying of pancreatic cancer. (at the time of the video, 2008) He starts off the talk by saying he has about 3 to 6 months of good health left. He makes it known that he is not moping or spending his time crying about his current situation. He says he is in relatively good health considering what he is going through. He even does push ups on stage!

He talks about his childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and lessons learned. He had some crazy childhood dreams, like being in zero gravity, and being like Captain Kirk. As crazy as those dreams sounded he accomplished almost all of them. He learned an important lesson while playing little league football. His coach said, " Your critics are the ones that are saying they still love you and care." How true that is. Dr. Pausch said that when people stop correcting your mistakes, it means they've given up. He begins to talk about "head fake" learning. This is teaching people something in a fun way, to where learning is fun and doesn't seem like work.

He also talks about brick walls and why they are essential. He says they are there to let us prove how badly we want things. Some times, people can be brick walls. If there was never anything in our way, we wouldn't have to work so hard to fulfill our dreams. He encountered many brick walls trying to become an Imagineer for Disney. Dr. Pausch taught a course on virtual reality that encompassed all of the departments. The students would create virtual worlds and demonstrate it for everyone. This class has become so huge, the program is being created in other universities. That class was his way of enabling the dreams of others.

Dr.Pausch is an inspiration. His entire talk wasn't about childhood dreams, it was about how to live your life. If you live your life for more than just yourself, good things will happen. He has given the world hope, even when he was in such dire need of hope himself. I cried and laughed so much while watching this video. I hope that it will be as much as an inspiration for all those who watch it, as it was for me.

Comments4Kids week 8

Organization

This week for my comments4kids assignment I read James' blog about organization. He wrote about how important organization is to writing. If you aren't organized, your readers will be confused. It's so great to see students learning these things early on, it will be extremely beneficial to James later in life.