End of Semester Chaos

I have to admit, this semester has been by far the easiest work load I have had, until now. All of my classes didn’t have many, if any assignments due throughout the semester. I loved it and wasn’t spending near as much time on homework as previous semesters. I sure am kicking myself for it now! Everything seems to be due within two weeks, and within these two weeks I seem to have so many out of school events to go to as well. I know I will get it all done. I have my days that I get a lot done and then there are those days that procrastination seems to take over. Even though I have a heavy workload right now, I am glad I have these two ECMP projects to work on. I love doing video style projects and that is what both my summary of learning and my final project are. If I could put everything aside and just work on these two assignments I definitely would, but unfortunately I can’t. The end of April won’t be here soon enough!

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Skype

Today in class I had my very first Skype experience. We spoke with a class from Moose Jaw, a class from B.C., and a teacher from Ontario. The first class from Moose Jaw was a grade one class and I was very surprised with how they continued on with their work while their teacher was talking to us. You could totally tell they had Skyped many times before and it wasn’t new to them. I kept thinking if I did this with a grade one class of my own the students would be bouncing off the wall from excitement and curiosity! I was very impressed with the order that was maintained in the classroom while we spoke with them. We would ask a question and the students would put up their hand if they wanted to answer it. If they weren’t picked they would continue on with what they were working on.

I was so impressed with the amount some of these classes and teachers incorporated technology into their everyday lessons. I kept thinking that there is no way I could do this in the school I hope to teach in. It’s great if you have the funding and access to these things such as Nintendo DS, laptops, and webcams, but the school I have in mind does not.  It has a computer lab shared between 7 classrooms, and 2 or 3 computers in each room. With that many students and so few computers, I think it would be hard to do many of the things these people are doing. The teacher from Ontario had a lesson planned out for the next day and she had laptops spread out on the desks for students to use. That would be great, if you had the laptops. I know there is always a way to include technology into your class, but I certainly think small town schools don’t have as many options as city schools. Maybe by the time I get my teaching degree (two years) things will have changed!

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CMT Texter

I often find myself saying “oh I should blog about that!” but I never remember to do it and then I forget what it was that I wanted to write about. Not this time! This past weekend as I was relaxing on the coach with my amazing boyfriend, I was working on some homework and somewhat watching T.V. at the same time (talk about multi tasking!). CMT was on and the host was interviewing a guy.  I didn’t catch what it was about but I did notice right away that while she was introducing him he was on his blackberry.  I don’t know if he was texting or on a website or what he was doing but it looked absolutely stupid! She asked him a question, I don’t remember what it was, but he looked up and said social networking is awesome and everyone should do it and then continued on with what he was doing on his blackberry.  They then showed the viewers how they could send an e-mail in to dedicate a song to someone, so maybe they were advertising that you could do this on a phone. I have never seen someone being interviewed on national television do anything like this before.  I could quite possibly have completely missed the point, but still. He didn’t seem interested about what she was saying at all. As I watched it I said to my boyfriend “that guy has no idea what she just said!” and I guarantee he didn’t. I know I have a really hard time texting someone a message and listening to someone talking to me at the same time. I just found this really interesting since so many people feel that cell phones are used at inappropriate times, and I feel this was one of them!

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New Recycling System for Regina?

I came across this article in the Leader Post this morning, and I was very excited when I read the headline: City of Regina staff recommends curbside recycling program. I had never really thought about the recycling system in Regina until I took a Geography class last semester than dealt with environmental issues. My professor mentioned many other cities that have curbside recycling and she couldn’t understand why Regina wouldn’t incorporate something like that into their disposal system. She said each person could receive a bin similar to the garbage bins everyone in the city has now. Once as week, just like the garbage, a truck would come and pick up their bin of recycling. This is more convenient for people than piling it up in their garage or basement and taking it down to Sarcan or to recycling bins somewhere in the city. Convenience is the key thing the City of Regina must keep in mind. For the majority of the population, including myself, if something is inconvenient I simply won’t do it. Too many people are throwing away materials that could easily be recycled and reused. This is having a tremendous affect on our environment which contributes to the vicious cycle of global warming. I am very interested to see what happens with this recommendation by the City of Regina staff, and I really hope they come up with something that will work!

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Tech Task #7

For our 7th Tech Task, we were given a selection of pictures that we were to use to create a story. We could add or change anything we wanted to, but we could not delete any of the original pictures. Chelsea, Chris and I worked together on this and here’s what we came up with – hope you are able to get the just of it! 

My computer has attitude tonight and it wouldn’t let me insert the video into the post, so for now click the link below.

Tech Task #7

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Google Maps

 

When Google Maps came out with the option of viewing every street in the city, I was pretty fascinated. I am a nervous driver when it comes to going somewhere by myself that I am not familiar with. I always Google map the address of the place where I am going and print out a map for me to follow. Yesterday when I was mapping out my friends house, I remembered that I can drag that handy yellow man down to the address and get a visual of her apartment building. This was such a big help! Instead of me driving like an old Grandma and looking at every number on every building, I was able to just look for her building when I was on the right street! Knowing what it looked like beforehand made me so much more comfortable finding her house. It is defiantly something I will make great use of in the future!

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Tech Task #6

We made spreadsheets in class, here is mine!

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Technology

So far in my ECMP 355 class, I have learned about so many neat and useful resources. Yesterday we learned all about podcasts and how to use Garageband. Once again, I am left bumed out that this is a program that is only available on a Mac computer, and not my HP (I feel the same way about iMovie). I am not the biggest fan of the way a Mac computer works, but I think it’s great that I get to learn how to use these programs in case I change my mind in the future. I had a lot of fun working with Garageband and I think I could spend a lot of hours playing on it.

The other day when I was thinking about my class schedule, I realized that ECMP is by far my favorite class of the semester. I am not trying to be a brown noser, I’m just saying. Tuesday’s and Thursday’s are long days for me because I get bored fairly quickly so 3 classes in a row, each 75 minutes long, gets a bit much. All my other classes are  lecture style which makes the time go by even slower. I really look forward to ECMP class because I know that I won’t be bored. Alec encorporates different things into his lessons, like examples of assignments, websites, or video clips from youtube, and this really keeps me entertained and focussed. In my EPS 100 class last year, the class consisted of having people come in and talk to us about education. I remember Alec’s presentation being the most intriguing becuase he  jumped from one site or video clip to another as he talked about technology. This proves that using technology in the classroom can have a huge advantage for some students. I find Alec’s class keeps my attention way better than my other classes where the teacher just stands at the front of the room and talks. This encourges me to encorporate computers and other forms of technology into the classroom when I teach, so I can keep my students excited and interested too.

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Another Wordle

I find Wordle a very fun program to use. I love colorful and creative things so this is a great way to experiment with this. This is the second Wordle I have done. My first one simply described me as a person, and this one is filled with words that relate to me as a teacher. It is somewhat similar to a teaching philosophy, but I just put in words that I want to be as a teacher, how I want my students to feel, and what the outcome of my teaching will hopefully look like.

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