Access Lab

I visited Mary G. Montgomery and they were very nice and let me visit their access lab. The person I met with was Mr. Rose. He was very nice to us. He showed us the access lab. It was very neat. He showed us how he could zoom in on student not only in his classroom but in other classrooms. The microphone was so advanced that he could talk in his normal voice anywhere in the room and students who were at other school watching him could hear him as if he were standing right in front of them.
Mr. Rose told us that in order to get picked to be an instructor for the access labs that you have to teach something out of the ordinary. It has to be something that most schools don't offer like advanced British Literature. He introduced us to other teachers which I thought was very nice of him.
While we were in his classroom there was another class going on. It was a group of students taking an online course. They had a different teacher than Mr. Rose. I don't remember her name but she was very nice to us. We got to walk around and look at what they doing. The students were very nice to us as well.
Over all the experience went well.

A Classmate's Blog

The blogs that I chose to read belonged to Kerrie Owens. While reading them I realized that we thought the same on a lot of things. It was really neat reading what she had to say about certain topics. Sometimes it put things into a whole new perspective for me because I was reading it from a different persons' point of view and not just mine.

One thing I liked about Kerrie's blogs was that she gave a lot of information and was never quick to the point. She always let the reader know exactly what was going on. Blogs like that are more interesting to read in my opinion because you are more clued in and know whats going on. The more information you have, the more you learn from what you are reading.

Another thing I really liked about Kerrie's blogs was that she used a lot of pictures in her different postings. That also makes it more interesting. Having something else to look at besides a bunch of words all the time spices it up a little bit and "adds flavor". It makes for a great blog!

Ok not the hard part, something I didn't like was...some of the blogs seemed maybe just a tad bit too long. I know earlier I said that it was good that weren't quick to the point and gave a lot of information, but some of the blogs went on and on and gave way too much information I think. But over all I really enjoyed reading Kerrie's blogs and I think she did a great job doing them! If I could grade her I would give her an A+ !!

Duke University

I chose to listen to a podcast called "The Importance and Limitations of Specialization". The speaker was President Richard Brodhead of Duke University. It seams that he was giving the speech to new students attending Duke University. He gave the speech very well. He was too serious and joked around a little bit which I thought was nice.

Our classroom podcasts

I listened to 4 podcasts including mine, all of which were in my class, and I'm just going to post some notes of what I thought about them.

-People spoke very clearly but I did notice there were a lot of "hmm's" and "umm's"

-In every podcast it seemed like there was never a "conversation"; it was always just one person talking. That is fine, but it is better to me to have two or more people talking. It makes it more interesting.

-When talking about the different topics, I think sometimes we stayed on one topic too long.

Over all I think we did a good job on the podcast considering it was our first time doing them.

Maine Department of Eduacation and Mathematics and Technology

Maine Department of Education
I chose to listen to the podcast "Time to Think About the Accessibility of PDF Files". The speaker is Cynthia Curry. She is letting the listeners know how easy it is to access PDF files for students with disabilities. She has a whole bunch of podcasts that talks about different topics students with disabilities have.

Mathematics with Technology
The speaker is Judy Chandler. She is a teacher and in her podcast she says she has spoken with other mathematics teachers. Judy says that teachers should be more engaging in the math activities and that this along with a few other things will bring the students' grades up.

I really wasn't very interested in either of the pocasts that I listened to. They just didn't spark any interest.

The Stanford University

I chose the podcast that talks about teaching science. The speaker Donald Kennedy talks about how the world needs to understand how important science is. He also said the we needed faculty to back us up. The podcast had many different speakers that pretty much were saying that science needed to be taught in not only K-12 but also on the college level.

It was kind of boring but I plan on getting my masters in the science field so it's something I need and should be very interested in. When I start teaching I am going to make sure I let my students know how important science is and I am going to make it fun and interesting for them.