About Me

My name is Beth Helm. I am originally from Frisco, Texas. That is where I went to high school and basically grew up. I came to the University of Central Oklahoma to go to school and play soccer. I originally did not plan on becoming a teacher when I first came to this school but after the first semester of my sophomore year I knew that was what I want to do. I am majoring in History for Education and I plan to go on and get my masters degree in Counseling. I really want to become a teacher to help kids. I love helping people so I think I should reflect that in my professional career. I hope to become the best educator that I can!

Blogging Buddies Reflection

In the video We Like our Blogging Buddies: The Write Stuff with Blogging Mentors the most signifigant thing that I took away from this video is how truly effective blogging can be. I loved what the two instructors were doing in this video and I think it was a great idea that they had to both help the first grade students with writing and get the college students some teaching experience. I would have never thought blogging could have been so effective. I guess I just have a bias view of it from my experience. The only time I have ever really seen blogs have been with myspace or Twitter which I have thought have had no merit than for people to tell everyone else what they are doing and thinking. However this video opened my eyes to how truly effective blogs can be. I wish that I could be apart of this project and have a blogging buddy.

The ideas from this video connect to my own life because the people in this experience, well the college students, thats me. They are doing exactly what I am doing and trying to become an educator. They probably have most of the same requirements for school as me and this is a new project to further help them become better educators in the future. I envy them for having that opportunity because I think it would be so cool to have that experience to help kids with their writing like that. And like I said in the previous paragraph I have never really experienced anyone using a blog like this before. I just think it was an awesome idea and should be employed at more schools, I think it could really help the students as well as the educators.

Some implications of this video are that now I have the idea in my head that blogging is an effective teaching tool. Everyone can improve on their writing and blogging provides a forum for others to read what you wrote and then help you improve it. In my future teaching career this method will definitely be in my head as a tool to help my students improve their writing. As far as the Pedagogic creed goes, this further helps kids become literate and as an educator that is one of our main goals. Think as to how much further these kids can go with getting constructive critisism on thier writing. School in the future will be so much easier for them because they have gotten extra help. I really enjoyed this video and took alot away from it.

Cameron's Video Reflection

In the video entitled Digital Generation Project Youth Portrait: Cameron, which can be viewed at http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-profile-cameron-video. This video was very relevant to our society today. I really learned in the process of viewing this video all the possiblilities that techonology has in a classroom and how effective of a teaching tool it can be. It was also amazing to see how young of a boy could be so adept at technology and was actually teaching adults how to use the new technology. I took away from the video how productive and active kids can be with technology and I really appreciated it because it showed how technology can span the generations and really connect us all.

This video relates to experinces in my life in that when I was in high school there were many kids doing things just like Cameron is doing. They were far older that Cameron but they were still very adept with techonology. Every Friday we had video announcements and they really made it look like a news cast from television and everyone always loved it because it was new and different and exciting and we were always proud of our classmates for being able to do this knowing that most of us could not accomplish that. This video also made a connection with me because I thought it was awesome to see a kid using technology in a positive way and not just to play games as it the conception of kids using the interenet and computers. Cameron is really bringing in the new generation of technology and how it can be used.

The implications of this video really drive home that techonology can and should be used in the classroom and it can be used very effectively. You can see in this video that using technology in making lessons interactive make students more excited to learn. With watching this video as a future educator I saw how I could get my students more involved and use all of my technology resources to make my job easier and more effective for the students. Also what I have learned will help me follow the Pedagogic creed as an educator and use all my resources to help educate the students under my care.