#7 Concept Map- Basic Food Groups

Basic Food Groups

I.       Fruits

It is important to eat one fruit with every meal. There are many different types of fruits so you can eat a different fruit each meal. Apples, oranges, melons, bananas, and grapes are just a few examples of fruits. Eating fruit helps to keep our bodies healthy.

A.    Berries

1.    Strawberries Blackberries raspberries blueberries

B.    Melons

II.     Vegetables

Vegetables should make up a major portion of our diet. Though these are usually our least favorite, vegetables provide us with the nutrients we need to stay healthy. We should try to eat one to two servings of vegetables per meal. Corn, celery, peas, broccoli, and potatoes are all examples of vegetables. Almost all vegetables can be eaten raw or cooked

A.    Root Vegetables

1.    Carrots

2.    Potatoes

B.    Stem Vegetables

1.    Celery

2.    Broccoli

C.    Seed Vegetables

1.    Beans and Peas

III.    Grains

The grain category doesn't really look good but it still has very yummy foods. There are two different types of grains, whole grains and refined grains. Some examples of whole rains are brown rice and oatmeal. White bread and white rice are examples of refined grains. It is healthier to eat more whole grains than refined grains. It is important to eat 2 servings of grains per day.

A.    Whole Grains

1.    Brown Rice

2.    Oatmeal

B.    Refined Grains

1.    White Bread

2.    White Rice

IV.    Dairy

Dairy products help our bodies stay healthy and keep our bones strong. Milk, cheese, yogurt, pudding, and ice cream are some examples of foods found in this category. It is important that we get 2-3 cups of dairy products everyday.

A.    Milk

1.    Yogurt

B.    Cheese

V.     Protein

Protein helps to give our bodies the fuel it needs to keep going and keeps us full so we don't overeat. There are many different types of foods that belong to the protein category. Chicken, steak, eggs, and seafood are all examples of protein foods. It is important for us to try and eat 2-4 oz of protein with each meal.

A.    Meat

1.    Beef and Pork

B.    Poultry

C.    Eggs

D.    Seafood

3. Develop an understanding of the characteristics, structures, life cycles,
interactions, and environments of organisms.
      c. Communicate the importance of food and explain how the body utilizes food.
(DOK 2)

#6 Podcasts

Podcasts are a very interesting form of learning. For visual learners, like me, podcasts would not be the way to go. It is something that you have to focus on and listen to without having anything in front of you to read about the subject that is being talked about. I think it is a good way to listen to information, but at the same time I think it is more difficult to comprehend than reading something out of a book or seeing in on a PowerPoint. There are some people out there that like to listen to things rather than read them. Podcasts are a very convenient source that can be downloaded to any smart phone, computer, or tablet and listened to wherever and whenever you feel like it. It is a good tool to have, but not something I prefer.

The first podcast I listened to is called “What’s the Best Way to Teach Teachers?” This podcast is about how teacher preparation should be more demanding and how there should be stronger certification requirements. One thing that the world needs to do is get rid of the myth of “natural-born teachers.” We assume that there are good teachers and bad teachers and we need to get rid of the bad teachers and get more of the good ones, but in reality teaching is a knowledge and skill and goes beyond knowing a subject really well. Teachers don’t anticipate the mistakes that kids are going to have and just have answer-getting strategies. Skilled teachers learn to anticipate how students are going to miss problems and how they are going to help them find a path to the right answer. This podcast really helped put an idea about how teaching is in reality in my head. I have never thought about these problems before but they are problems that should be addressed to improve teaching and the school systems.

The second podcast I listened to is called “Online University Skips Class to be More Accessible.” This article is about how students are reevaluating the value of today’s college education because of high tuition, scarce job opportunities, and student debt. For more than a century, higher education has relied on the credit hours in class and those credit hours add up to a college degree. At Southern New Hampshire University, they have launched College for America which is an online degree program with no classes, no teachers, and no credit hours. This program measures how much is learned rather than how much time a student sits in a classroom. It is an innovative way to make college more affordable and still learn as much information without taking so much time out of a person’s day. I think this idea is a great idea for people that can learn on their own, but I don’t think it is a good idea to have all classes like this because some people need assistance and visuals besides what’s provided on online classes.

#5 How Shutterfly and Other Social Sites Leave Your Kids Vulnerable to Hackers

In this article, How Shutterfly and Other Social Sites Leave Your Kids Vulnerable to Hackers, the author writes about how a very popular website, Shutterfly, doesn’t have SSL which is a strong form of internet security used to prevent websites from being hacked into. Shutterfly is a website that allows users to upload photos of kids, home addresses, emails, gender information, phone numbers, school names, jersey numbers, and game schedules all in one place. According to Mother Jones, Shutterfly knows that they don’t have this internet security, but continue to not do anything about it and when asked about it they went around the topic. Without SSL, this website can be hacked into with just a few clicks by almost anyone, allowing them access to all information of anyone that has an account on there. This is shown in the article by Tony Porterfield, a technical engineer for Cisco in Los Altos, California. Porterfield is trying to make this problem more known to parents and coaches so they can become aware of the issue and remove all personal information about their children from any website.

Like the last article we read, this is just more proof on how bad the internet can be. The internet is a great tool to make things in life easier, but parents and teachers need to be informed on the security of the websites and how to detect if the website has the right security before putting personal information out there. As a teacher I will need to do research before using any online activities to make sure that the website has the right amount of security. It is more important to not use the internet than to put my students in danger.

#4 With Technology Taking Over in Schools, Worry Rises

In the article, With Tech Taking Over in School, Worries Rise, the author writes about technology companies collecting a large amount of data about students because of the rise in the technology industry, with little control on how the data can be used. This has become a concern for many across the United States and many are beginning to take action to secure that the information that students give electronically is personal and not for any other purposes. The state of California was the first state to pass a law restricting educational sites, apps and cloud services used by schools from selling or disclosing personal information about students from kindergarten through high school, using the children’s data to market them, and collecting records on them. After California passed this law, many other states started to take action on making sure the students’ information is secure. With technology rising, parents across the country have started challenging the industry’s information privacy and security practices. Personal information should be only used for other purposes with consent from the student.

I think that this article is a great eye-opener for many people to show them how the technology industry is booming and how important it is to keep everyone up to date but also keep personal information confidential. As a teacher it will be important for me to assure to the parents that all of the work online will be on protected sites with good security systems. Keeping students updated with the latest technology is important so they will be able to keep up with the outside world, but I also think it will be important to show them other methods besides technology so they don’t rely on it for everything and can still be sociable with one another. Technology is a great tool, but it can also be a dangerous tool.

#3 NMC Horizon Report K12

• NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in schools.

• Each of the three global editions of the NMC Horizon Report — higher education, K-12 education, libraries, and museums — highlights six trends, challenges and emerging technologies that are likely to enter mainstream use within their focus sectors over the next five years.

• The framework focuses on the systemic approaches that are needed to scale up innovative pedagogical practices, especially in ICT-enabled learning settings.

• The process used to research and create the NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition is rooted in the methods used across all the research conducted within the NMC Horizon Project.

• The procedure for selecting the topics in the report is based on a modified Delphi process refined over 12 years of producing the NMC Horizon Report series, and began with the assembly of the panel. The panel represents a wide range of backgrounds, nationalities, and interests, yet each member brings a relevant expertise.

• The panel was composed of 53 technology experts from 18 countries on six continents this year;

• A key criterion for the inclusion of a topic in this edition is its potential relevance to teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in K-12 education.

• These questions were designed to elicit a comprehensive listing of interesting technologies, challenges, and trends from the panel:

• What trends do you expect to have a significant impact on the ways in which schools approach our core missions of teaching, learning, and creative inquiry?

• What do you see as the key challenges related to teaching, learning, or creative inquiry that schools will face during the next five years?

• Which of the key technologies catalogued in the NMC Horizon Project Listing will be most important to teaching, learning, or creative inquiry in K-12 education within the next five years?

• What key technologies are missing from our list? Consider these related questions:

• > What would you list among the established technologies that some schools are using today that arguably all schools should be using broadly to support or enhance teaching, learning, or creative inquiry?

• > What technologies that have a solid user base in consumer, entertainment, or other industries should schools be actively looking for ways to apply?

• > What are the key emerging technologies you see developing to the point that schools should begin to take notice during the next four to five

• The NMC Horizon Project model derived three meta-dimensions from the CCR framework that were used to focus the discussions of each trend and challenge: policy, leadership, and practice. Policy, in this context, refers to the formal laws, regulations, rules, and guidelines that govern schools; leadership is the product of experts’ visions of the future of learning, based on research and deep consideration; and practice is where new ideas and pedagogies take action, in schools, classrooms, and related settings.

• Expectations for teachers are evolving rapidly, especially as student-centered learning and flipped classroom models are increasingly emphasized by departments of education and school administrations.

• The teacher’s role is becoming that of a mentor, visiting with groups and individual learners during class to help guide them, while allowing them to have more of a say in their own learning.

• Teachers are no longer the primary sources of information and knowledge for students when a quick web search is at their fingertips. Instead it is up to teachers to reinforce the habits and discipline that shape life-long learners

• One visible example of the transformation of teaching is the Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and Collaborative Teaching (RESPECT) project, an educator-led initiative in the U.S. that aims to better prepare students for the 21st century workforce.

• Universities are also working to evolve the teaching practice by providing K-12 classes with entrepreneurial experiences

• Key to nurturing the new role of teachers is providing them with plentiful opportunities for professional development.

• For educators in other parts of the world, a number of online platforms have been developed recently to equip teachers with technical skills without the expense of traveling, including the international NMC Academy, along with EdTech Leaders Online, which focuses on aligning teaching practices with the Common Core.

• Rather than the teacher using class time to lecture and dispense information, that work is done by each student after class, and could take the form of collaborating with their peers in online communities, curating online content, watching video lectures, listening to podcasts, and more.

• Deeper learning is a term increasingly used to describe a variety of approaches in which students gain knowledge and skills by investigating and responding to a complex question, problem or challenge.

• Deeper learning can be an important approach to making schools more relevant and effective, and this trend is gaining traction across the world.

• To enable the shift to deeper learning, schools are thinking about how they can leverage technology to produce products and extend the learning experience beyond the classroom.

• Education leaders are working together to develop more professional development opportunities for teachers so they can integrate deeper learning in the classroom. The Alliance for Excellent Education ,the Buck Institute for Education,33 and the Hewlett Foundation are just a few groups leading efforts to work with states and districts to improve learning goals, provide teachers with ongoing training and tools, and share best practices from exemplary schools.

• School leaders seeking to learn more about the impact of large-scale implementation of OER can look at state-wide and district-wide initiatives.

• To aid teachers with integrating OER into their classroom practices, the OER Commons is an online hub for content curation and training that was developed by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education.

• Hybrid learning models, which blend the best of classroom instruction with the best of web-based delivery, place a strong emphasis on using school time for peer-to-peer collaboration and teacher-student interaction, while online environments are used for independent learning.

•  Blended learning is often used as a synonym for hybrid learning.

• Hybrid learning is seen as a way to level the playing field for rural schools by providing more access to a variety of high-quality courses.

• Electrovibration refers to the process when a finger is dragged across a conductive, insulated surface, creating an electrostatic force that results in a rubbery, sticky, bumpy, or vibrating sensation.

• The future of “feel screen”-enhanced devices offers many possibilities for deeper interaction with educational content, and with it and accessibility that caters to users with physical and mental disabilities

• Being able to interact with the material on the screen improved letter and word recognition among students.

• While the traditional model prevails in many classrooms, there are initiatives now that award funding to schools for their work toward innovative redesigns of the school day.

• Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC), for one, allocates funding for Breakthrough School Models, which put personalized learning first through flexible learning environments that leverage time, space, roles, and instructional modes to meet the needs of each student.

• Though this trend is at least five years away from mainstream implementation, there are certain schools that, after setting the precedent, are actively working to help other schools replicate progressive school structures through teacher education.

• In Future Classroom Lab Learning Zones, six schemes are outlined and are intended to optimize physical space, leverage ICT resources, and address the changing teacher-student dynamic. Each scheme is centered on a specific skillset —Investigate, Present, Interact, Create, Exchange, and Develop — and is supported with a list of key objectives, useful equipment, and resources.

• Innovative learning environments call for teachers to have a solid grasp of the underlying pedagogies that support the use of technology in order to holistically transform the school experience.

#2 A Growth Midset of a Child

After reading the post, The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart, I learned a few things from the author that makes me think about my future as a teacher and how I'm going to teach my students. Because I would like to teach younger students, teaching them to have a growth mindset is important for them to grow and take on tasks that will challenge them all throughout their years. I will praise my students for completing work, but I will also encourage and praise them for struggling with harder tasks in order for them to have a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset from a young age helps the children have a more positive attitude towards situations that they might not understand or have a problem with. With a growth mindset, students will know that they struggling in school is okay and doesn't mean that you aren't as smart as everyone else. This type of mindset will be very important in my classroom and hopefully will give the students more confidence in themselves when it comes to school work and when it comes to their self esteem.