Now for the Family

Well I see that you joined in on the blogging age. I was forced into it by this class I took in the Fall semester 08 and had to make one so all the post after this are just for that class and probably do not make any sence to any one else. Well I hope you are all having a great holiday season. I want to comment on Uncle Danny's blog but apperantly he doesnt want comments so I figured that I would send this link to him so he could see what a real football teams logo looks like even though we will go 11-5 and miss the play offs and I dont know if the Broncos can beat SD next week to scrap by at 9-7 and make the playoffs just so sad that 11-5 miss but a 8-8 crappy team can make the playoffs oh well enough of that.... wait almost left out the dog butted Packers hope you enjoyed your year off TOM! Rest up so we can get that 19-0 next season. I bought some new HD video camera's ill send your way. One last team to talk about I guess dont know if you guys are Texan fans but at least they are showing improvement unlike the Broncos and Packers and ill leave the aggie comments alone until next year ahh who am I kidding get your guns up. Anyways Happy Holidays talk to you guys later

Voice Thread

I am in a business and we use voice threads all the time. Its a lot easier then having to call everyone individually and explaining the same thing over and over. As for using it in my classroom I don't think I would use it because each student most likely will have a different question and I would have to do that individually anyways so I don't see a use for it in my content area yet, but maybe I will after I get started.

Publisher

I think that Publisher is a good tool to use. I have to make bulletins for chapel service and I think that this would help out a lot besides how I have done them before. I'm not sure that i would use this program in my classroom but it does have some advantages over just using Microsoft word. I did like the power point projects as well although I think we all could use a little more practice on how we do the presentations but the slides were good.

My Partner

Most of the time I like working in groups on projects. If you are in a good group and everyone puts forth a lot of effort a project can go by fast and easy. On the other hand if you get in a bad group or with a bad partner then I could just as easliy do a project by myself. My partner is Shalane on this project and I have worked with her before and she does good work so that is why we chose to work together. So far the project is going well we have done some good research and now just need to but in on the power point and work out the details.

Matching the technoloy

I think that making video games could be useful in a math class. In the process of making games the students would use a lot of formulas to make something happen during the game or in just a regular program making calculations. The only problem with that would be simplifing it where a student would be able to make some sort of project like that with out having to take 2 years of classes to be able to make one. I would suggest that some company make a program sort of like power point where it would be simple push a button and a box appears and you add a formula, something like that would have to be developed if it has not already.

Online chats would not be good in the classroom because the students would not always be talking about the assignment but other social issues they seem are more important the the task at hand.

There is one benefit to asynchronous is that if its a quick easy fix then just texting would be easier then meeting face to face, but in math that is hardly the case. I have tried to help my sister in law over the phone and wished we didn't live so far apart, because its hard to show algebra just by talking it out, and then you can't really know if they grasped the concept or not.

I think podcasts are just a new version of passively delivering information. For myself, I am more inclinded to not watch a video then to not watch a teacher, just because it bores me when there is no interaction with a teacher.

I grew up playing video games, and I will let my kids play them all they want. I have a lazy eye and one of the treatments I was on was to play at least one hour of games a day to try and strengthen my eye. Also, the doctor said that playing video games increases hand eye cordination and I believe that with the newer games are getting more intense with strategy and requires a lot more consentration then Mario Brothers did when I was a kid. Then I have to get my kids to concentrate on study just as hard as they concentrated on there games, and I believe that it would be good for them.

Delicious

To me this site seems like another search engine. I don't think it would be any more beneficial than using Google or ask.com. I don't believe I would use it in the classroom or in my personal time. The lay out is ok and the best thing about the site is that it is really quick. The only thing I would do is inform my students that Delicious is out there, because a lot of people probably would not know about it, I did not until this class.

Personality

The test showed that I am a ISTP. Part of that personality type is that I think rationally and logiclly and like to take action. Also this just happened to me on sunday, when an ISTP is stressed we experience outburst of emotion and anger, and my mom took the blow on sunday from that, so I feel that this was a very good test.

I like the Wiki's but i still have my conventional roots to me and it is hard to see how it could be utilized in the math field. I already read Shalanes blog and she had a good example of how it could be used in math by posting definitions. But to me learning math you need to be able to see someone put the definition into use before you can totally understand the definitions.

After the students have learned the concepts i think letting them work in groups and on wiki's could be benificial because they could learn from each other. This semester ive leaned more from my study groups more then from the professor because we each make mistakes and most of the time it is a different one and you can learn from each others mistakes.

I believe that personalities affect how they learn. Im more of a soft spoken and listen a lot and my friend is very open with everything and will voice his opinion wearther you want to hear it or not and he can stay at home and read the text book and make good grades while i have to be in class every day and see the material done and i dont have a need to open a book at home and make the same type of grades. I think giving this test to the class would help me learn more who they are and how i might be able to get through to them so I can help them succeed.

Spreadsheets

I'm not use to excel yet but I do see many advantages that spreadsheets could have. For the most part I feel that it easy to use i.e. you can find most everything you are looking for with a touch of a button. Being in the math field the ease of graphing is a great advantage for me. Right after I learned some of the basics in this class I had to make a graph on excel for Physics and it was very nice not having to do it by hand. I would definitely use that options in my class room just for the ease of not having to be like all my other teachers and say "I am not an artist, we will pretend that's a straight line."

As teachers I believe that the most useful thing of spreadsheets is the grade book. Every teacher I know uses it for that purpose if nothing else. Also, it could be used to keep up with assignments kind of like a syllabus. Modeling problems on excel keeps the work nice and organized and easy to read. It also is better then a calculator because though some of the newer calculators let you see what you typed in along with the answer, you are able to see what data you typed in and can find mistakes a lot easier. Also with calculators you have to remember the formulas you want to you and you have to do the operations in the right order, but with excel all you have to do is click on a button and it does it all for you. I like that kind of simplicity.

Inspiration

I think this tool would be very helpful in the classroom in most subjects. Would have been nice to have when I was taking english in middle and high school for writting assignments. I'll be teaching math so im not sure how I would be able to use it in the class room except for doing some kind of factoring of a number or start out with an equation at the top and use the bubbles as the following steps on how to solve the problem just to keep the students attentions and be something new for them to watch instead of just writting it done on the board.

For the best writting assignments would be english papers and research papers for history. You could also use it to plan out a science project. Which would make it into a nice easy to read hypothesis to conclusion and all the steps in between. In the brainstorming stages the kids could get together and make more ideas, more minds working is always better then one that may miss a great idea.

blogs in the classroom

I think that for math blogging would be only good for a study group of sorts. I would set up the blog and the students could post questions and i could help or if some other student could help then they could post suggestions. Also to get the students interested and helping others I could post an extra credit problem on there from time to time.

I think the Wikis would be good for math because they could find more examples of problems that they are having trouble with and I believe that you become more profiecient in problems that you can help/teach someone until they understand.

Alittle About Me

My name is Bradley Burks, I was born in Sulphur Springs and lived there most of my life. I spent 2 years in a small town called Van which is near Tyler. I moved back to Sulphur Springs and graduated in 1999. After high school I attended NETCC for a year before trying Texas Tech in Lubbock. It was only a year because there was too much fun to be had out there, so its hard to pass when you sleep through class. I then moved back and worked until I joined the Army in 2002. From 2003 to 2004 I spent in the sand box and we all made it back safely. The picture on the right is from the second deployment after I got out of the Army. Bottom right Robert Surber was my first roommate when I got to Ft Lewis, WA. Soon as I got back my contract was running out. I went to work in Allen, TX for awhile before finding my way back to Sulphur Springs and getting serious about school. I now live in Mckinney and should be graduating in December 2009 with 8-12 certification to teach math in hopefully Mckinney or Frisco. Im an avid Mavericks fan, and Ranger fan, and I watch the Stars alittle bit, but all my loyalty is to the New England Patriots and has been since 1994 so I dont want to hear anything about being a bandwagoneer. I also like to play golf, tennis, and I got roped into the guitar hero/rockband era. Along with taking 18 hours a semester I am now in the Army reserves for the next 2 years.