VoiceThread Project

I figured since this assignment included my voice that I would include actual pictures of me.  If there is anything I hate more than pictures of me it is the sound of my voice so...  I included the pictures from this trip because it is probably one of the most memorable trips that I have taken. We spend two weeks in Orlando with adjoining rooms (1 for the boys and 1 for my husband and I) in the actual Disney World Park so we got early entry everyday and a shuttle to any of the multiple parks there are.  Discovery Cove was rather new at the time and it is an exclusive park built by Sea World where you spend the entire day in the park swimming with manta rays, sharks, barracuda (sharks and barracuda behind a thick wall of glass for safety) and dolphins.  All of the equipment you need to snorkel the giant aquarium or float the rapids were part of the entry fee which also included a gourmet lunch, all beverages, wet suit, etc.  That day was so special because I had arranged with the park to have a surprise for my son's first "teenage" birthday and we had cake and ice cream after our lunch.  They even sang to him, 

Dolly too! Now it is four years later and it amazes me every time I look at him how much older he looks.  He looked young for even a thirteen year old but he didn't stay that way!  Once we returned from this trip both he and I started school, him in high school and me in college.  Now he jokes that we will go on Spring Break together.  I bless my lucky stars that my 17 year old would actually want to go on Spring Break with his old mom.

Sense of Place Poster Project

I really enjoyed putting together the sense of place poster.  Even though my "sense of place" was global.  (I really appreciate how flexible Skip is as a teacher.  It is a great example to me of how I should be in the classroom.) I didn't want to do the same old thing about me.  I'm boring!  And I haven't really any pictures of me that are current unless you count my drivers license.  (Which is actually a pretty good picture, go figure!) 

What I enjoyed the most was how well it turned out.  This would be great to use in the classroom as the product is perfect for the kids to show and to take home.  Honestly, the outcome was much better than the actual amount of work I feel it was.  It would be especially useful for students if they were doing Geography or Social Studies.  And I just thought about the lesson plan I am doing for a Weather unit, a poster of the different types of clouds would be easy to create to have as a reference in the classroom for the kids.  For the kids in my class now I could use the slide show I made of the visits their pen pal has made around the world into a poster they could hang in their classroom.  There are so many uses that I could just go on and on.  So I won't.   

panraven slide show

These are only some of the places that I would like to visit.  Given the choice, I would go EVERYWHERE!  So here goes....The only reason I can come up with for wanting to go to Istanbul is that it is a city so rich with history.  I like the name too.  I want to go to Greece because it is the birthplace of democracy and it is warm! (I miss that now that  it snowed a foot over night!  In April too.  So much for Global warming.) In a world where democracy is still such a hot topic, it is difficult to think that it actually started so very long ago.    Antarctica would just be too cool, literally!  The Galapagos would be fascinating because it is this small microcosm of a place that has it's very own species that can't be found anywhere else.  This is one of the things that I enjoyed about Hawaii.  It just solidifies the thought that life continues.  Life is a very powerful thing and will always find a way to continue.  Life is the ultimate example of the statement "Bloom where you're planted."  Micronesia.  I have wanted to go there for years.  It is supposed to have the best diving anywhere and I am an aficionado.  Of course, living in the interior of Alaska, I don't get to do that very often.  Egypt because of the history of the place.  The pyramids are thousands of years old.  When I compare that to things in the United States it just blows my mind.  We are proud of ourselves when we rehab a building that is a hundred years old!  The last place is Jerusalem.  I want to go to Jerusalem because it is the birthplace of the worlds three most prominent religions.  Islam, Judaism and Christianity all formed in this place.  Such hallowed ground for any believer and yet it has a history of immense conflict and constant bloodshed.  Will it ever be safe enough for me to visit?  So the most common reason I want to go somewhere is it's history.  Perhaps I should have been a history major.  If I could have any job I chose it would be world traveler.  But since Samantha Brown seems to have that one tied up for now I will simply share with my students the awesome world we live in and hopefully inspire them to become students of the world.

Me, Again?

I have decided that I must be anti-social at heart. I just don't understand the whole my space.com, friends.com, etc., etc. Why would anyone be interested in anything that I have to say? I lead a very normal life that is centered around my family and school. What's so interesting about that? I am probably anti-picture too. I see people with nothing but photos on their computers of friends and family. I don't have any pictures. I have never liked having my picture taken and I am always so busy doing whatever it is that I am doing that I never get around to actually taking any pictures. The most recent picture of me is almost always my drivers license photo! This time it is actually a pretty good one. Although I will share a secret, when I was 5 and growing up in Texas, I did the whole pageant thing and I actually almost always got Miss Photogenic! Go figure. That was just until I won Little Miss Copperas Cove, the big prize. I still remember the dress. It was a frothy pink, truly hideous creation. I looked like a walking cupcake. Maybe that's why I don't like having my picture taken.
Okay, my gripe for today is the punishments used in Secondary School. A student skips several classes so for punishment he has to spend the day in either ISS (In School Suspension) or OSS (Out of School Suspension). What is this consequence teaching them? ISS only allows them to fall further behind than they already are by missing even more class time and OSS is telling a kid that if he doesn't want to go to school the school is going to tell him that at least for one day he doesn't have to?!? So he can stay home, sleep in and play video games all day. What kind of a deterrent is that? I have come up with a plan. I say that whenever a kid skips a class he has to help the janitorial staff for however many days he was out. If he skipped only one class, too bad so sad, they still have to help for one day. This would serve as a real deterrent, hopefully help get rid of any misplaced sense of entitlement they may have, and it could help to defray the costs of upkeep by reducing the amount of janitorial staff that is needed. I can guarantee that the first time a kid has to clean up behind his peers and sees just how disgusting just the trash cans can be he will stay in class!

Mari's Maiden Movie

I bit off more than I can chew!  I was bored with the idea of making a movie with pictures of me, Who wants to see me!?!?  So I chose to do a video montage of the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel.  It wasn't until I was already half way through that I found another teacher had done the same thing for her high school history class.  She also did a web page with the lyrics of the song that can be double clicked to give an explanation of what they meant.  If any of you are interested, the site is here.

FlickrSlidr - Someday my Boat will come

I say "Someday my boat will come" because I don't need a prince, I need my own personal transportation to take me to all of these places I want to see in the world!  Well, I have been lucky enough to do quite a bit of traveling but not nearly enough.  For my first career I was an Air Traffic Controller and used the Air Force to get the training.  (Over 90% of all Air Traffic Controllers were in the Air Force so it seemed the way to go.) One of the things that I enjoyed about my stint in the military was the access to cheap travel.  I managed to get to Japan, Australia, Germany (I saw Pink Floyd at the Wall.  Yes, I said THE WALL.  Very Cool!) and several other places in and around Europe.  But there is a great big world out there that I haven't had the opportunity to see and want to before I die.  I think travel is the best education a person can get and don't understand people like Paris Hilton who have all the money in the world and only go to places like Paris, LA and New York.  There are Hilton hotels everywhere and even if there aren't you can afford a room!  For me I say, "Have passport, will travel!"  I am actually considering signing on as a Department of Defense teacher and being sent to teach on military installations around the world.  How cool would that be?

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I am a movie maker!

Who would have guessed that I would be making a movie.  I rarely use a camera much less a digital camera so the fact that I am making  a movie with imovie is certainly surprising.  I chose to make a movie with "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel.  Making a movie of myself would certainly bore y'all to sleep.  You see, I don't see the use of writing about me, I have already done all of it so retelling it proves to be dreadfully boring if only just to me.  So Billy Joel seemed a much more interesting prospect except that now I find myself somewhat depressed and a bit overwhelmed.  Thank goodness for Spring Break or I would never get it done.  

And just to give you an idea of how depressing seeing the pictures from our varied history, I almost used a picture of a Panda cub covering his eyes for China's under martial law.  The line is referring to Tienenmen Square but the photos recounting the very violent and turbulent times from approximately 55 to 85 are overwhelming!  I found myself needing what Shakespeare called "comic relief".  No kidding!  I eventually used the lone student standing in front of a line of tanks but I haven't deleted the picture of the panda cub yet.  It is my own personal comic relief.  And just in case you need a laugh I included him at the top!  (Honestly, I meant for it to be at the end but it didn't work out that way and I am too tired to try to fix it!)

PowerPoint as an Instructional Tool

I have always enjoyed PowerPoint presentations when my professor has used them and assumed that I would also use them in my classroom.  It really wasn't that difficult finding my way around in PowerPoint although I am sure that I have only scratched the surface of what it can do.  It also wasn't too difficult using the graphic tablet.  But again, I am positive that I have not yet found all that it is capable of.  The time consuming part of this assignment was discovering all of the bells and whistles and trying to design my slides.  

I am sure that PowerPoint will be very useful in the classroom.  Part of the allure is that each lesson plan doesn't have to be re-created.  You can save them n the computer for re-use.  In this way it would be best to keep them very simple as your instruction will inevitably vary based on the classroom you are in.  It may not be as useful for Math as it would be History because of the level of interaction needed.  By this I mean that in Math you must show the process as you do it while in History you could put up outlines with basic facts that do not change and lecture around them.  

Another benefit is that it would be easier to share information with students who have been absent and missed valuable instruction time.  This could be accomplished through sharing the slides with the student after they return to school(during recess, lunch, etc) or they could be e-mailed to the student at home or in the hospital. (God forbid!)  It could also be used to include diagrams within the slides themselves.  This is much easier than trying to deal with an overhead projector.  The fact that information from other programs including pictures, sounds, video, etc. can be included within the slides and that it can be used on the computer, PowerPoint instruction has a mobility and variability that has not been possible previously.  The human or personal touch in teaching cannot be ignored or replaced but PowerPoint can certainly enhance teaching.

My life is a giant steaming pile of BLOG!

Yesterday I got a phone call telling me that one of my sons good friends had killed himself.  This has thrown all of us out of sorts, especially my son.   I feel like my heart is being ripped out of my chest because this is the one thing that I can't protect him from or make better.  Eventually all of us suffer loss and a broken heart and we all have to learn to muddle through it in our own unique way.  But as a mom this type of thing leaves you feeling utterly helpless.  You can't explain why it happened and you can't make it go away.  There are no magic words to say to scare the monsters out of the closet, no baby aspirin to get rid of the fever, and no goodnight story that will make all well with the world.  I am doing the only thing that any mom can do, I guess...let him know he is loved and that I am there in whatever capacity that he needs, whenever he needs.  These are the times that I am thankful I went to such great lengths to ensure open lines of communication. Being a parent is such great training for being a teacher but gosh, I hope being a teacher hurts less.  Thanks for listening or reading or whatever you call it.  If I am the blogger, does that make you guys the blogee's?

Literature and Learning

I am going broke purchasing children's literature!  Honestly, I could simply check out the books from the library.  I get around this fact with the thinking that I will use them in my classroom as a teacher so why not buy them?  (I suppose I should at least wait to find out what grade I end up teaching, I doubt that a fifth grader will want to read Goodnight Moon!)  I had forgotten how much I enjoy these books.  I am an avid reader as an adult but I was not usually found in the children's section.  Now I am always there.

More on-line sites

As promised following my class presentation I am adding another blog with a couple of more sites that I came across.

NASA Quest

Dr. Seuss

These are both awesome sites. NASA has an entire k-12 outreach program. The website is initially a bit overwhelming just because there is so much information. It could prove to be invaluable to a teacher trying to come up with inventive new ways to teach Science. The Dr. Seuss site is too much. There is even a game in it (there are several games) where you create your own three scene book using Dr. Seuss characters complete with changing backgrounds and music that you choose.

There are lots more that I have come across and I will on occasion drop one into my blogs for all to see and share. Honestly, this is my third year and I have a binder crammed full of stuff for teaching!

Software resources

I love hunting around the internet for fun stuff to do. The only thing that I don't like about it is how much of it is old. Who does the house cleaning in the World Wide Web? I came up with several more than three that I enjoyed so I am only going to highlight the top few of them.

First, my favorite because I hate "running" into the "convenience" store only to have a clerk that can't count.

Software Title: Cash Out
Grade/Age level: k-12 depending on settings
Subject Area: Math
Platform: both
Purpose: This game is a cash register where the player is the clerk and has to make change. The easiest level has a penguin buying something for 82 cents and telling you that they get 18 cents change. But, it can be made very difficult. I set it on hard with no hints and no help from the customers and was presented with a purchase of $12,326.32 that I had to make change for from $15,000.00. My husband and son both played this game and liked it. My husband and I had a bet on how well our seventeen year old would do and he surprised us both. This game is addictive with fun animal characters as customers. Even the adults that have played it enjoyed it.

Software Title: sharknumbers
Grade/Age Level: k-3
Subject Area: math/place value
Platform: both
Subject: This game is on a surfboard with numbers appearing in water bubbles beside it. An amount of cubes appears on the surf board and you click on the bubble with the number that you think coincides with the blocks on the surfboard and hit enter. If you are right, you get to go again. If you are wrong....CRUNCH! Off comes a huge bite from the front of your surf board! Ouch. You get to get bitten several times before you are thrown out of the game. This would be especially good for boys since they love sharks. There are only bite marks so it isn't as if it is Jaws for math. It is especially good because the blocks look just like the blocks that we use in the classroom.

Software Title: Room 108
Grade/Age level: k-8
Subject Areas: all major, science, math, reading, geography, etc...
Platform: both
Subject: This site has lots of games and stuff for teachers in every subject. There are tons of ideas for teachers (including how to integrate the stuff on the site to the classroom) on top of the games for the students. I enjoyed the Skeleton Game very much under science. You click and drag the different bones to where they belong and when you are done the skeleton dances a little jig. The games for state capitals are fun too. The whole site is a treasure trove of cute and informative games and worksheets, etc. There is even a section of ideas for science fair projects.

On a side note, I wanted to let you all know about the brief and informative clips that I found on itunes. By going to itunes and entering in the search field "KQED" you find almost a hundred clips on everything from the physics of baseball to predicting the weather! All of them are anywhere from a few minutes to no more than half an hour and are free. The age levels are different for each but appear to be good for the upper elementary/middle/high school level.

I hope that you all get something useful out of this blog. I know that I did doing the assignment. Now if you will excuse me, I have a shark trying to eat me off of my surfboard.

One to One Reflection

One of the reasons the public school system was established in the USA was to produce educated voters. Our fore fathers believed that if our democratic nation, which was still in its infancy at the time, was to survive then those who participate in the democratic process must be educated. They had to be able to read and write and think critically in order to vote knowledgeably. Today I believe that the aim of all teachers is to prepare our students for adulthood so that they may be 'productive members of society'. It is for this reason that I am in support of the one to one program. Regardless of my own personal trepidation at change, our students need to embrace the technology in order to be competitive in todays and tomorrows global market.
Some of the fears that Ihave were addressed by the teachers in the film. The access to tech support is huge! This program would not survive without it. Nor would I! Many spoke of how the laptops don't change how they teach as much as it enhances how they teach. This is good. The kids loved it and while I initially wondered at the "wall" that was being placed between the students and teachers in the form of computer screens, most students pointedly mentioned that they had a better, more personal relationship with their teacher because of e-mail, etc. I wonder at the ability of students to share more intimate information with their teachers because of the the freedom they might feel due to e-mail having no judging eyes....sort of like people spilling their life stories out onto the blank page...This could be a good thing too. Admittedly students would have to be taught the etiquette of this new medium but so will we all. Anything that allows a teacher to understand his/her student better will make them more effective as instructors.
Ultimately, I am all for any tool that has any chance of making me more effective and successful as a teacher. Even in the face of change, my students and their future success is more important than my own feelings of inadequacy or fear of change. If I don't understand the medium my students feel most comfortable communicating, playing, learning, etc. in then I owe it to them to "get with it".

A real bit about me

Well, especially in school, you learn something new everyday and blogging seems to me my latest endeavor. My first blog was nothing. I don't know what happened, I opened it and was ready to write and then it was gone and posted with nothing in it. My second was the least
I could get away with. My name is.... and see ya! So now I am feeling a bit bolder. I have two tech classes under my belt!!!
I took my time coming back to school. I started out as an Air Traffic Controller which I absolutely loved until it was time to raise a family. Shift work and all.... I still miss it but taught with the UAF's Science camp last summer. I managed to turn several of the boys onto it as a possible career path. My son being one of them. (His desire to become a controller like his mom helped when it came to showing him why high school algebra was important and would actually be useful!) Anyway, after working as an Administrator for the State for many years I decided I wanted to do something a bit more fulfilling than paper pushing bureaucracy and chose teaching. I love learning and can imagine nothing better than spending every day helping kids learn to love learning too! So that's me.
Oh, and the joke with my son and husband is that since my son is a junior in high school and I am a junior in college that we will go on Spring Break together! I don't think so!

Personal Introduction

Hello.  My name is Mari and I am a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  I am a junior in the Elementary Education program.  This blog is my first and I am sure that I will mess it up. Actually, I already have---my first posting was nothing, no comments.  I am not sure how I did it but I will try to ensure that I don't do it again.  I am going to have to add to this blog on occasion for my class so I will try to make it somewhat interesting.