ECOMP BLOG

Shelby, Eric, Jonie and I finally finished our virtual tour of the university!  I ended up having to cut out a lot in order to make it work.  Hopefully everyone can see this and enjoys it!  Let me know if you have any troubles.  You can also go to the actual site if this doesn’t work for you.

Well the last two weeks of my mentorship have been much better.  I was given the email to the new teacher with gerald angusts class but he did not reply and there were no new updates on their site to comment on.  However, my slide show for the Mall-ards Kindergarten classroom went really well.  I made a 12 slide page slideshow about the first nation around Foam Lake.  It was a lot of fun and I learnt a lot about them!  It fit right in with their lesson plans and the students enjoyed it. 

I learnt lots from this experience, mostly that it is great to attmpt to make connections with other people to encourage your own students to be open minded and worldly.  I also learnt that teachers get busy and that it in’t always going to work perfectly. The Mall-ard Kindergarten classes website gave me great ideas how to use the internet to be effective in my future classrooms.  I think that using it to post projects and the success of the projects or even assignments that will be due, is a great communication mechanism.

When I googled my name today I found lots of stuff.   At first I was sort of surprised since in grade 11 we were assigned to google ourselves and all I found were nation youth science awards, sports reviews and town involvement reviews(I actually made this program that is posted).  However, this time I found more than ten pages!  Some of my old tags were no longer in the first ten pages and instead they were replaced with new ones.  Mostly facebook, twitter, myspace and academic related comments.   In addition, there were other tags such as the Kelsey’s restaurant and other peopel with the same name. 

              I don’t feel like my personal space is being compromised or anything like that, but I do think that it would be wierd to find pages and pages of gossip about me and pictures.  I think I don’t mind there being “googleable” because there is nothing bad.  I suppose I would think differently if I was famous and people were actually googling me.

           I have made a slideshow for my kindgarten class focusing on the first nation group which is near Foam Lake.  They are called the Fishing Lake Reserve.  I showed them pictures of them, where they are, and taught them about their tribe.  Things such as clothing, weapons, housing, food and language were focuses of the slideshow.  I also showed them pictures of the landscape.  Currently this is the only class I am really involved with. 

My other class with Gerald Aungst is sort of on hold since their is a new teacher in that classroom now.  I have contacted him via email but have not yet heard from him!

      Last class we had three speakers attend our class.  They were Kathy Cassidy, Darren Kuropatwa, and Clerance Fisher.  They are all teachers who use technology to their advantages in the classroom.  They see technology as something that will not only help them but also allow their students to explore themselves in many different ways.  I found this extremely interesting since I was not given these opportunities to this extent during my public education.  When I was in elementary school we had old style computers and extremely slow dial-up internet.  Over the years technology has found a huge role in schools.  However, my school is a small rural school so we didn’t get lots of these new amazing technologies or even new ideas of how to use the pre-existing technologies until my final year of school. 

       One thing that Darren said that really grabbed my attention was that he posts his daily lessons on his own site.   I think this is a really great idea.  I know that I have a hard time remember things such as deadlines, lessons from the morning class or other fun things that we may have learnt in class.  It would of been great to be able to go home and review my day.  Now this idea has a totally different advantage for a younger level of students.  Even though they themselves would not go to look up something they missed, their parents could!  This way they know what their children should have brought home or what they should be working on improving from parental observation of either note books or attitude towards homework. 

      Kathy had a totally different approach to the technology boom.  She achknowledges that technology is assumed as basic knowledge.  The next generation is expected to know how the fast changing technologies work in order to do their jobs or even survive in society.  Face it, learning how to use technology is now a necessary part of the classroom.  We want our children to be internet safe and how to use the technologies availabe to them and not abuse them.  However, they still need to learn basics such as writing with a pencil.  Technology is not replacing basic skills but more of an attribute to further them as they get older.  The fact is that I still use a pencil and paper  even when my computer is write beside me. 

     Clerance had one of the best ideas talked about last Wednesday night.  He focuses on literacy development using technology.  He has a wiki set up for his students to blog their thoughts or writings on the site.  This way others students or perhaps parents can comment or even give advice. 

All of them had great ideas and gave me lots of ideas for the future!

I am a volleyball fanatitic!  The Foam Lake Panthers have had a really good on the starting line up so the starting line up is the exact same this year minus me!  I was the libero and had so much fun. Since I am vertically challenged I found my place diving all overthe place.  Last weekend I dedicated my weekend to the team at regionals.  Foam Lake held regionals and ended up coming out in first place.  Therefore, this means they are off to Provincials.  Last year we lost out in the final game of Reginals in the third set.  I was sort of sad so I am super glad to see them go on!  Since Provincials are being held here, in Regina,  I would not miss a second of it!  Lots of my friends are coming out for the weekend and it was also an excuse to get my boyfriend out to the city. 

Here is a picture of our team last year!

Basically I am just bloggin on two mentor wiki sites but I feel like it’s not enough.  Unfortunately none of them are allowed to use Skype so I am having some issues coming up with some ideas to connect with them.  For the most part they are not answering my emails so I want to do something to get their attention.  Maybe a video for my Kindergarten class.  I noticed they have made some first nation puppets so I was thinking about making one.  Maybe I could do a video on another art project.  Anyone hve any cute ideas for these little guys?

I used to have very good health but when I was 15 I actually almost died from microplasma pneumonia.  I don’t remember over 30 days during that time of my life.  I lost 20 pounds and missed out on almost the whole season of basketball, christmas, and lots of school!  I have had it two more time since then but fortunately I can tell when I am getting it and go and get medication really soon. Basically since then I have gotten every sickness that is around me.  Since I have moved into res I basicallyget sick at least three times a month. 

Every day I watch AFV (America’s funniest home videos) while I make my supper.  I sure hope that everyone has seen that show because it is absolutely the funniest show ever made.  After a long hard day I love to wind down and have a good laugh at all those people hitting their heads and making complete fools of themselves.  Recently this past weekend my boyfriends newphew was caught on camera doing the most adorable but yet hilarious thing.  He is six months old and he can’t quite crawl yet but he gets up on his feet and hands and then rocks back and forth while making a high pitch squeeling noise.  However, on sunday Tyson’s niece,  Ryann, who is 7 months old was with Caden playing on the floor.  Ryann’s bottle was on the floor and Caden wanted it soo badly but he can’t crawl forward. So he flopped on his belly and swung his arms all over the place while making hilarious noises.  Needless to say it was absolutely hilarious. 

 To the left is Ryann and to the right is Caden! 

Here is a winning video of some adorable babies! Enjoy!