"Growth" vs. "Fixed" Minds

This podcast was about the difference between "Fixed" and "Growth" mindsets. Dr. Carol Dwech explains that a "fixed mindset" is when students believe that their basic intelligence is just a fixed trait. This means the students are concerned about how they chose their activities on whether they will look smart or not during it. The "growth mindset" is simply the teaching of the brain as a muscle. The "growth mindset" is a muscle that increases intelligible skills.

Dr. Dwech taught the growth mindset by developing an 8 session workshop. Half of the workshop was taught study skills and a growth mindset and the other half got all study skills. The study skills did not work because the students did not have motivation to put the skills into practice. But the first group was able to learn they could increase their intellectual skill, and learned their brain is like a muscle that it gets stronger with use. The students with just study skills had declining grades with the first group with both study skills and growth mindset had increasingly good grades.

The growth mindset was tested by race car drivers. Dr. Dwech says the difference between the winners and losers was simply how they handled defeat. The "growth mindset" allowed drivers to stay in their zone and the drivers admitted their mistakes and then were able to overcome them. This allowed "growth".

I believe the "growth mindset" should be applied in the classroom because I think it helps students learn from their mistakes. The race car driver example was a great example by Dr. Dwech. Teachers should use the "growth mindset" to help their students increase intelligence to optimal performance.

Grades 6-8 itunes podcast post

I watched the grades 6-8 podcast titled "Characteristics of the sun". The podcast explains that the suns mass generates the gravitational force that holds the entire solar system together. The sun is actually a star and compared to others is below average in size and temperature. Did you know you can fit over one million earths inside the sun?! Pretty interesting right. The podcast explains that the superheated gas above the suns surface is known as the corona and it is about 3,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, the earth is about 93 million miles away from the sun. That's a pretty long ways away. The most interesting part of the podcast is when it explains if one was able to ride a spaceship to the sun that travels 5 kilometers per second, it would take a little less than a year to get to the sun! That is a long time...

These k-12 podcasts are pretty cool. There are so many of them and they cover a wide range of topics. The majority of them deal with science and the solar system. However, it was interesting to see that the "Characteristics of the sun" podcast I listened to is the same for grades 6-8 as grades 9-12.

I don't really think that these podcasts, sense most of them deal with science and the solar system, can really be of use to me as a physical education teacher. However, I feel like elementary, middle school, and high school teachers could find these useful. If students are having trouble learning material dealing with science of the solar system, teachers can have them watch these to help them learn. The podcasts are clear and get the material across very well.

Accessibility For All Presentation Comments

Our class listened to Mr. Sullivan speak on October 2. In his presentation, I learned about web accessibility guidelines, ensuring web accessibility, and common adaptive software. Web accessibility is basically making web pages accessible to all users including those using adaptive hardware and software. He also talked about how web accessibility is required by the law and mentioned "The American's with Disability's Act" and "The Telecommunications Act of 1996". The "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" (WCAG) was adopted by World Wide Web Consortium in 1999. This made content accessible mainly for disabled users. Devices used for disabled people to access the internet include: Portable Data Assistants and Refreshable Braille Display. Mr. Sullivan was very passionate about all of this information and it was interesting to listen to.

The Edible Schoolyard AND A Night in the Global Village

The Edible Schoolyard podcast is about an outdoor classroom at Martin Luther King middle school in Berkeley, California. Students spend time planting, harvesting, and eating organic food from their large, edible schoolyard garden everyday. Teachers incorporate the schoolyard into their classes such as social studies, math, science, everyday life. They try to make the garden the center of teaching. According to the podcast, they are learning basics of ecology, photosynthesis, cycling of matter, resilience of an ecosystem, cooperate and do projects together, and build community. The students also learn to cook the food they grow during school as part of school lunch. The kids sometimes forget it is even school, but at the same time the kids are all learning vital and fundamental information.

When I first saw the assignment of listening to "The Edible Podcast", I did not really know what to think. I was curious to see what it was about. It was interesting to see that this middle school thought creatively in basing most of the their learning off of a large edible schoolyard. I have never heard of such a thing but anytime I hear something different like this, that the students have a fun and easy time learning quality information, I am interested. Maybe when I am a teacher I can incorporate something similar into my classes.

The second podcast was "A Night in the Global Village". The voice of the podcast was quite hard to hear actually. The podcast itself was about a program designed to help kids know what it feels like to walk in someone else's shoes. The program focuses mostly on hunger and poverity as well as sustainable development. These kids in the podcast are from Denver, Colorado and travel to Perryville, Arkansas. This is where the Global Village is located. Students are split into groups and experienced living conditions in the following countries: Thailand, Zimbabwe, Urban, Guatemala, and Appalachain and Urban refugee camps. All but the refugee camps are able to receive one resource, such as food or water as well as a bucket of some other resources they can use.

I think it this podcast was cool because I think it is important to see how others live. Sometimes kids take for granted what they have, but at the same time do not understand what others have and do not have. The global village seems like it could humble kids. I do not know if it would be all that possible to incorporate this into my classroom as a physical education teacher but hopefully in other classes it would be.

Alabama Virtual Library

Alabama Virtual Library, also known as AVL, is extremely useful to teachers, students, and citizens in Alabama. AVL allows teachers, students, and citizens online access to important library and information resources. Most of the information comes from online databases that have research articles coming from magazines, journal, and newspaper articles. The AVL allows students to achieve academic excellence more easily.

Since it is only offered to residents of Alabama, one cannot register online. People have to go to their local library and obtain a Alabama Virtual Library card. However, schools may offer their students AVL cards. Some universities and colleges allow their students to access specific campus databases for AVL. Overall, I think AVL is an interesting idea and I feel like it could be useful and help students, teachers, and citizens obtain better knowledge of material they desire through online library resources.

Podcasts!

I listened to episode 146 first in the SmartBoard Lessons podcast. It was all about clouds. The two people who presented the podcast was Ben Hazzard and Joan M. Badger. In this particle episode, it happens to be Joan's birthday, which Ben seems to endlessly point out. They hold their show out of Lake Winnipeg. They talked about clouds and cloud formation. Ben says "clouds shelter us from the stars". They are interesting to listen to because they get along well together.

The next podcast I listened to was in the Connect Learning section with David Warlick. The podcast consisted of an interview with librarian Ann Krembs. The only problem I really had with this podcast was all the noise in the background that I heard while David and Ann were doing the interview. But besides that I thought it was a well conducted interview between the two.

I then listened to KidCast.tv Learning and Teaching with Podcast. This is hosted by Dan Schmit. The title of the podcast was "Questions make the world go round". I thought it was interesting because it was only one person talking the entire time, which is pretty hard to do. The first two podcasts had 2 people in them and seemed to flow better. He talks about extending a students sense of asking good questions by asking methodical questions.

The last podcast I listened to was in EdTech Talk and was hosted by Maria Knee. She opens the podcast by saying she welcomes conversations and enjoy discussions that follow. She asks for clean conversion. This podcast discussed the role in parents in education. She interviews a lady named Lorna who has been involved in her kids activities for a long time. They discuss that is it very important for teachers to be involved in the organization of student activities by committees with middle and high school students. I particularly liked this podcast because it seemed natural and not really.

Coming into this assignment, I did not really understand what a podcast was. But after listening to them I gained a better understanding. I found that all of them opened with music and the ones that sounded better were the ones with at least 2 people holding the conversions. I think this assignment has helped with our upcoming podcast we will give.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

I just watched Randy Pausch's last lecture on www.youtube.com. It was a very interesting speech to watch and listen too. The first thing I noticed about Mr. Pausch was his humorous personality. It was sort of weird to me because before I watched the lecture, I knew about how he only had so long to live. So the first few minutes it seemed like he was in an upbeat mood and he was telling jokes. So right off the bat, I was intrigued with this man.

Mr. Pausch lectures about how although he has ten tumors in his liver, he still is going to keep having fun everyday. It is admirable to watch him talk because you tend to forget he is a dying man. The speech is based on: his childhood dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and lessons learned: how you can achieve your dreams or enabling the dreams of others. One of his dreams, among others, was playing in the National Football League. His little talk about this interested me because I thought it was relative to me in that how I want to be a basketball coach. He talks about something I have previously heard from my old high school basketball coach and that has stuck with me. He says "if you see yourself screwing up and no one is bothering to tell you anymore, that's a very bad place to be". It makes sense because you should only should start worrying when no one is trying to help or correct you because them saying something to you shows they care.

Mr. Pausch also talks a lot about the "headfake". This means that the best way to teach someone something is to make them think they are learning something else. I have thought about this concept a lot in how I would like to teach basketball when I coach. I believe basketball is a way to teach kids important lessons without them consciously knowing they are. So, his little spiel on that was fascinating. He also mentions people who help us. These are: teachers, mentors, parents, colleagues, and friends. Everyone should have people they can count on to help them through situations and be there for them.

Throughout his speech Mr.Pausch refers to the brick wall. This means it is a stoppage point in what you are trying to achieve. Near the end of his lecture he mentions that brick walls let us show our dedication. He is saying that anything good comes with hard work. Mr. Pausch mentions some final lines of advice to close his lecture. Some that stuck out to me included: don't complain- just work harder, be good at something- it makes you valuable, and find the best in everyone because no one is all evil, just be patient with them. It is eye-opening to hear him talk because you know he is talking about doing the right them and you know it can be done because he proves it. Overall, watching this speech was definitely influential and I'm glad I was able to learn about Randy Pausch.