Project #9 PLN Progress Report

My Personal Learning Network is reall starting to come along. After learning more about a PLN in my last blog post and reading about others it has made it pretty understanding. I have started using twitter as my main tool in my personal PLN. Twitter is an amazing tool to use for a thing such as this. There are all kinds ofdifferent people and pages to reference to on Twitter. Facebook is also a good way to strengthen your PLN. It also has many educators and education pages to help better your educational future. I am also starting to use Pinterest as a resource for my personal PLN. There are thousands of things I can use for stregthening my PLN. I like to keep my main favorites around the core and if I can't find what I'm looking for in either Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest, I will seek my content elsewhere.

C4K Comments

   In my 1st C4K, I had a K-5 student who was very bright for his age! His post was short but he was writing about how much fun he has in the snow. He was really excited about the new snow that had fell and that he was going to be able to snow tube.

   My comment to him was about how lucky he was to get snow every year and that I was happy to hear his love for it because most people up north believe it to be a burden. I told him about how I had only seen snow twice my whole life and that we hardly ever get any in the South. I asked him what was his favorite thig to do in the snow and to teach me just in case we had a mysterious blizzard one day.

   In my 2nd C4K, I had a 2nd grade student who was from a northern state and he loved Hockey! His whole post was about his love for hockey and how much he loved to watch his hometown pro hockey team play which was Pittsburgh. He hoped to one day be a pro hockey player.

   My comment to him was introducing myself of course, and then I told him that I didn't know too much about his beloved sport but I was also a huge sports fanatic. I told him that I played college baseball here at the school, and asked about the sports he played besides hockey. I also asked him if he could help teach me some of the rules of hockey.

   In my 3rd C4K, I had a young boy who was writing about his trips to the beach over a holiday weekend. He said that he had fun in the water with his dad and that they captured their own mussels and cockles to cook and eat for themselves. 

   My comment to him was basically telling him that I also loved the beach and hanging out with my family and friends while I was there. I told jim about how hot our summers were in the South because he was from a northern state. I told him about how hot our sand gets and sometimes it's ver hard to walk on. I asked him exactly what were cockles because I have never heard of them. I told him that here on the coast our seafood mainly consists of shrimp, crab, and oysters. 

Blog Post #7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture:

   Dr. Randy Pausch was a man of ultimate character. Since my first encounter with one of his lectures earlier in the semester, I have been intrigued by this gentleman. After watching "The Last Lecture," I again was reminded of why I was touched by his words the first time I heard him speak. He wasn't only a man with tips about time management skills, he was brilliant in the way he used words to inspire and motivate people to better their position, whatever that may be. I can only imagine what it would have been like to be present in the Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium then night of his last lecture. I'm sure it was thrilling, especially knowing the fact that Dr. Pausch was on his last leg so to say with his health problems. He was very quickly approaching a premature death and still had the intentions of hopefully, helping other people with his words. This man is a hero who had life figured out, unfortunately, things he couldn't control took his life.
   Getting away from the emotional side, his message was, and is, genius. He began by talking about achieving personal dreams and enabling others to achieve their dreams as well. He believed he had achieved all of his childhood dreams and that sometimes enabling others to do the same is even more fun. Anything is possible and I think he didn't want us to lose sight of that. The inspiration and permission to dream is huge in his mind, and I think should be a key aspect of everyone. His points about playing on sports teams, experiencing new things, and trying your best all intervene into something bigger than a singular act or subject. If you play on a sports team or join some type of club, you will learn things like teamwork, leadership, responsibility, discipline, and other helpful attributes that you will want to be polished in later on in life. Of course everybody wants to be the star of the team but he used a quote that summed up the greater principle which stated, "experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted." He calls this Indirect Learning or Headfakes where even though you may not be physically successful you still gain positive attributes as you go after them. In summary of goal achieving, you may not achieve every single one of your goals but you will come away from pursuing them with something very valuable.
   Dr. Pausch speaks of adversity as a "brick wall." Says they are there not to stop us, but to show us how badly we want something. This makes sense because if you want something bad enough, you will do anything possible to get what you desire. If you still don't get what you desire even though giving it your all, I would think that person could be content about his/her efforts and move on positively from there. I know if I give something my absolute "all" and I still don't come out exactly where I want to be, I can still live with the fact that I tried my best! Most of the time when you do give your all to something you end up on the right path anyway.
   There is a lot to learn from this video and I am glad that I was able to get the chance to watch it. Dr. Pausch made me realize that not only should you break through the "brick walls" that try and bound you way from success, but also try and help others do the same! Especially after you have reached all of your goals in life. I hope that one day I am able to say, as he was, that I captured all of my childhood dreams and also found comfort in helping another person or multiple people do the same!

 

Project #8 Group Project