C4T #4

Post #1

This week's C4T Assignment was posted by Mrs. Denise Krebs, and it is entitled "Vlogging". In this post, Mrs. Krebs discusses how she has recently been introduced to the idea of "vlogging", which is sharing ideas, questions, thoughts, and experiences with other educators through videos on YouTube. Although Mrs. Krebs was not yet claiming to be a vlogger, she is very open to the concept and has joined the Fellowship of Open Spokes. This is a group that meets in a connected YouTube channel each week, and they discuss ideas and reflections in video form. In the video she posted, Mrs. Krebs talks about how she has been an educator for many years, and while she was a blogger, this idea of vlogging was very new and intimidating to her. At first she was unsure of it, but she says that she is always challenging herself. She bases her teaching profession off the idea that the teacher should be the biggest learner in the classroom. She also provides links to additional videos about vlogging and the Fellowship of Open Spokes.

I commented on Mrs. Krebs's blog post by first introducing myself to her, and then I thanked her for sharing these ideas. I let her know that as a future educator, I am always open to new ideas. I also said that because YouTube has so many uses these days, why not use it for something constructive? I wrote that I loved how she based her teaching career off of the idea of being the biggest learner in her classroom herself. I told her that if we as teachers did not have a passion for learning, how could we expect our students to do the same thing? I then thanked her for her post on vlogging, and I let her know that I was looking forward to reading more of her posts soon.



Post #2

The post that I was assigned to read this week was once again written by Mrs. Denise Krebs. The title is "Vincent Van Gogh Pesevering" and contains words in a letter from the artist Vincent Van Gogh to his brother. In the text, Van Gogh writes that his works are not yet what he desires when he is still in the process of creating them. He goes on to basically say that making progress doesn't happen as quickly as one would like for it to happen, but the basic necessities when trying to reach a goal are patience and faithfulness. Van Gogh writes that when he is working on something, he doesn't think much about the difficulties because if he thinks about them too much he would be "stunned and disturbed". Mrs. Krebs describes the words of Van Gogh as having a sense of perseverance. She writes that she hopes she hopes and believes her students learn in the long run.

I commented on Mrs. Krebs's blog post by first letting her know that I loved the quote. I said that I felt like many people wanted to see positive results of whatever they are striving to achieve without dedicating their time or putting forth one hundred percent of their effort. I agreed with the way that she felt about this quote. I wrote that nothing in life worth having is easily obtained, and as a future educator, I hoped to drill this same type of work ethic into the minds and spirits of my students. Hopefully, this will be a fire that I can light inside of my students, one that can never be put out. I told her that, like Van Gogh, I hoped to leave behind a legacy in my classroom that my students can benefit from. I wrote that I not only hoped to help them grown intellectually, but to also challenge them to develop better human qualities. I once again told her how much I enjoyed her post, and that I hoped to hear more from her soon.