the beginning

This fall I will be interning at Weyburn Junior High School. I have met my co-op teacher, and have made teaching arrangemnts for the fall. However, I have yet to find a place to live. I have placed an add on kijiji in hope that someone will answer my request to find housing in or around the Weyburn area.
Regina Classifieds

If anyone knows someone in or around Weyburn who might be looking for a temporary tenant, please let me know.

…For the most part, Flickr and I have had a great relationship over the past few weeks, since we were introduced. But Flicker has been unwilling to cooperate with me lately. I can upload pictures and view my lovely photostream. I’ve added Flicker as a widget on my sidebar, and I can’t figure out how to convince my friend Flicker here to show pictures through that widget. A while ago, I started a ‘My Life‘ page in order to show pictures that represent significant events in my life. Now I want to get rid of that page, and be able to show all my photos through Flicker….but Flicker won’t let me!!! Flicker and I need a mediator to help us through…any help out there?

Over the course of this spring I know I have grown as a teacher, and I believe ECMP 355 really helped me to accomplish things (like my wiki) that otherwise I never would have done. This class has ade me realize the endless possiblities of useing technology in the classroom, and given me the opportunity to become comfortable using some technology. I’ve always been one to try new things, and now I have been introduced to so many new things that I want to try in my own classroom….animoto, epals, skype, radiohead, twitter, picasa, and the list goes on. Through ECMP I worked with and became comfortable with a number of programs, such as: scribd, jing, screencast, wikispaces, windows movie maker, audacity, smartboard, blip.tv, photostory3, flickr, skreemr, and of course google reader, docs, and calendar. It’s amasing how much has been accomplished in such a short time, especially when thinking back to the beginning when I was completely clueless about anything to do with computers.

I have to admit, on the first day of ECMP when Alec said we had to create a blog as a class requirement, I thought blogs were dumb. I thought blogs were pointless, and only gossipy teenagers used them to fill time. But now…I have to say, I am actually quit happy that Alec made me keep a blog. My blog shows how I’ve grown as a digital immigrant and one day will serve as a professional portfolio. Through this blog I can make posts about school, technology, my personal interests, and know that someone somewhere might be thinking the same things, or be able to help me out. I’m also beginning to see the benifits of twitter, even though I am not a member, it may be useful one day to have a network of people with similar interests in mind around to chat and brainstorm with…especailly as a teacher. Two heads are better than one…how about 100 heads?!

If you read through my blog posts, you’ll see my progression. This is not a journal, but I’m becomming more and more comfortable writing about my personal thoughts and experiences. One of my favorite blog posts would have to be Axe vs. Dove, even though the post is very simple and includes barely any text, it had quit a few responses and challenged others to think critically. Some of my best responses were to Sarah’s blog posts, some of which turned into my own blog posts. Just as In Schools Today was a response to one of April’s posts, that I just had to copy and paste into my own post.

Just as we did in ECMP 355, I think student blogs would be useful in the classroom. Students could submit homework and assignments as blog posts, they would be able to view eachothers work, and I as the teacher would subscribe to all my students’ blogs. This would also be a great way to keep up to date and in touch with my students. I would learn a lot about my students from reading their blogs, and the fact that I would be keeping current with technology would also give me a common ground, something in common, with my students, creating positive relationships for in the classroom. And anyone who knows me, knows that building relationships is a huge part of my philosophy as a teacher.

Thank you to everyone in ECMP 355 this spring for all your supportive comments. This has been a great spring session!

Untill recently, I completely forgot that Bill Nye the Science Guy exsisted…crazy!? I’ve been planning for the day camp I work at this summer, and we’re going to be having a science week…”the Final Frontier.” So as I was preparing all my kitchen science experiments I thought of Bill Nye, and how awsome he is. This short clip explains a little bit about illusions and how the human eye can be fooled. Enjoy!

Hmmm…so I’m not sure what the deal is, for some reason Google Reader will not open… I check Gmail constanly, and have gotten into the habbit of checking my google reader to keep up to date with all the blogs I’m subscribed to. But for some odd reason, today I am unable to view anything on my google reader page. It opens…but the page is blank I’ve had enough of my own difficulties through out this blog concerning technology, so I’m not too surprised when things don’t go my way the first time round. But this is really weird! All my other accounts work perfectly fine, Gmail, google docs, google calendar….sigh. Hopefully google is just updating and I can get my blog fix later.

Untill everything with google gets worked out, does anyone know if there is any way to crop or change the size of pictures in blog posts?…

Sharlene and I created a stop animation film using smart board, windows movie maker, and audacity. After all our hard work and frustration with movie maker…this is what we created. Enjoy!

Where oh where has my calender gone?! I realized that my google calender doesn’t show up on my Math Wiki when I view my homepage. Which is strange, because the media link is there while I’m editing the page. I’ve been trying to fix this for a while now, and hope it works tonight when I present my final project. Any helpful hints?

For my final project I decided to create a Math Wiki, that hopefully one day I will be able to use in my classroom. My reason for choosing this project is because I hope that by creating online lessons, I will become more active in and around the classroom, and have more time for one-on-one teaching moments. With my Math lessons available online, my students will be able to choose a concept and learn at their own pace. For example, those who understand and finish an assignment early can move on to the next lesson, while I am helping slower students with the first lesson. Possibilities are endless with wikispaces, I hope to one day incorperate more than just math lessons and assignments, I would like to include educational games for freetime, and add other subject areas into the mix.

I hope you all enjoy my Math Wiki. It may not be perfect yet, but the curve is steep and I’m learning more to make it better everyday.

This past winter while I was pre-interning, my grade 6/7 split were finishing off their Health presentations on drug addictioins/abuse. One of the presentations really surprized me, children use Dust Off, a computer cleaning product, to get high! It’s called “dusting” and when you spray into your mouth and inhale it, you get a 10 second high. This is scary stuff! To kids, it might sound like harmless fun, but the reality is that the compressed air can make your lungs and airway sieze…preventing you from breathing. It also contains a propellant called R2. It’s a refrigerant, like what is used in your refridgerator. It is a heavy gas, heavier than air. When you inhale it, it fills your lungs and keeps the good air, with oxygen, out…that’s why you feel dizzy, or buzzed. It decreases the oxygen to your brain and to your heart. Inhaling Dust Off can kill you!

“Dusting” is becomming more and more popular amoung our children, and it needs to be addressed in schools and at home. I’m wondering how long it will take, after how many children are sent to the emergency room, will suppliers take Dust Off off the shelves. But while this product is still being made available, we need to educate our students, our children, in order to protect them. We can’t always stop them from the things they do, but we can support and guide them to make the right decisions, and not give in to peer pressure.

I completely agree with April’s post that weather or not students succeed or improve completely depends on how we define achievment. Achievments will variey from student to student, and thats something I think more educators need to gain an understanding of. Too often do we categorize and label our students, we need to see our students as the individuals they are.

I also liked that she commented on homework loads. Homework is an issue we argued about in EPS390 with our prof. Some educators disagree with giving homeework, but I think most give it. When teachers assign homework, I think they have to know their students and how much they can handle. From my pre-internship experience, it seems to me that their are some students who could not mentally or physically handle homework, but many students lack the responsability to even atempt to complete homework. This is where I have an issue. While I was teaching in an average middle class school in Regina, I assigned homework only once. The students knew when it was due and what my expectations were, yet only about 5 out of 28 were complete on presentation day.

Now you might be thinking, maybe the assignment was too difficult. Well I was in a grade 6/7 split and the assignment was to design a poster about themselves and where their families came from. I gave 2 or more hours of class time to work on the posters and then it was homework. The fact that only 5 students were able to present on time seemed to me like a lack of responsability and a lack of caring. Once the posters were complete, they looked great and I posted them up in the hallway, but getting them done was a real challenge. There must be a way to make our students more accountable. Docking late marks didn’t seem to help. Any advice for the future?