Krysta's Blog

My 8th Semester

wishlow — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:50:37 +0000

Wow I have completed eight semesters or 40 classes. That is a lot of time spent in university and learning. In my past university experience I had to reflect on everything – education classes that is. Why is it now that I actually want to reflect? Why could I not go to sleep because I wanted to write this post while it was still fresh in mind? I tend to think when I lay down to go to bed. I am horrible for it and it takes me forever to fall asleep some days. The thoughts keep running through my head – what I learned, what I have to do or how I feel about a certain subject.

Throughout my internship, I really didn’t want to come back to university. But once I was at the end of my internship I wanted to come back to the university. I wanted to learn something, anything. I learned tons in my internship but I wanted to start thinking at a higher level – not grade 5. As a future teacher, my class was awesome in helping me explore myself and my confidence. Now I was back at the university and I wanted to be on top of everything – all my reading, responses, projects and posts on Moodle. I was very determined for this goal but eventually my days didn’t have enough hours and I found myself not keeping up with everything. However in the end I real did surprise myself. I had a couple projects that were supposed to be collaboration but I ended up doing them alone. Sometimes I spent so much time worrying that once I had done it, I just shook my head. Why was I so scared? Why did I not think I could do it? I don’t give myself enough credit and I think I can’t do an assignment because it is hard and I don’t know what to do or how. For me, this last full semester was all about finding myself and finding what I believed in. I registered for classes I thought I would enjoy and learn from.

EMTH – Originally I wasn’t registered for this class but with the misunderstanding of ECMP actually being on Wednesday, made me change my whole schedule around. This class focused on some math topics but we talked lots about social justice issues. This class often touched on other classes because many of my classes dealt with society and what is happening around us. I think this gave me some insight into life as an educator.

RLST – I needed to upgrade an elective and I chose a class on the Hebrew Bible. I am not that religious of a person but this class was quite interesting. Again, it was neat to see the issues in the Bible relate to other classes I was taking. Our prof made class interesting and he embraced the small class environment. I realized I really did need to explore the Bible. I had to write a comparative essay on the sacrifice of Isaac. I was scared but when I got the assignment back I did pretty well. I was on the right track and dug into all my commentaries and resources to produce a diverse paper. See, I really suprised myself there! My final essay was again a comparative essay between Genesis 6 and the novel, Many Waters. I struggled with this but technology actually helped me. I needed some ideas for my specific focus and where I wanted to go with the essay. Out of curiosity I went on Twitter and asked “Anyone religious and want to give me an essay topic dealing with Genesis 6?” I received a direct message from a math teacher in Garner, NC. He had read the novel and new his Old Testament. He gave me some ideas which was great because he was the only person that had read both parts. I had asked others for help and tried to explain the novel in two minutes but he was the only one who knew exactly what I was talking about. If you ever read this – Thanks so much! Who knew my social networking would benefit me in my RLST class? I didn’t…I was very suprised to get a reply. I sure am glad I thought to use Twitter in this time of frustration.

EFDN – Well I loved this class. If you know me, you definitely know that. At first the class was intimidating but I thought I would stick with it – I hated having to mess with my schedule since I had to switch so many classes already in my first week. But I sure am glad I stuck around for this class. Not only did I meet some awesome people, who I would have never met otherwise but it made me open my mind. Each week we talked about another issue in society that dealt with education. We talked about residential schooling, gender, masculinity, femininity, heterosexism, social class, bodies, bullying, disabilities and many other topics. Each article dealt with the effects it had in schools and schooling. Each week we explored an issue. I would say I am a shy person especially when I learn with peers but this class made me speak. I wanted to share my thoughts on articles and I wanted to make points that others hadn’t brought up. I really allowed myself to grow. As a future educator, these topics open your eyes. Some teachers don’t think about all the issues that surround schooling in society. But now I can acknowledge those issues and have some insight because I have explored the topics. This class almost makes me want to come back and do a masters on one of the issues.

EPSY – This class opened my eyes to children with learning disabilities and disorders. I really wish I had the chance to take this class before my internship because I would have understood some students better. I was given strategies and I was also able to learn from others. We posted each week on specific topics and reading what others wrote gave me many AHA moments. The prof also told us about the students she works with and it showed the reality of working with children with special needs. We also had guest speakers and they talked to us from a different standpoint. We had visits from a doctor, a student, a mother, another special education teacher and a speech and language pathologist. If I have to make a plan for a student with a disability or disorder – I knew who would be part of my team. Remember: “A child is a child before they are a disability/disorder.” We also had a chance to talk about this issue in my EFDN class and I had a better idea of the topic then I would have had without this class.

ECMP – Well I already reflected about this class.

Okay, just because I wrote more about one class then the other…it doesn’t mean I liked it better. Each of these classes expanded my “worldview” and my “knowledge.” I can thank each of these classes, and ECMP also, for helping prepare me to teach! Thanks.

Now I think my brain won’t be churning because I got all this information out of my head!

Last Class

wishlow — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:21:11 +0000

Tonight was our last ECMP 455 class and I won’t lie I didn’t really want to go since tomorrow is the last day of classes and I just wanted to relax. But I am glad I did go. I got to see a different side to everyone – especially the 355 class. I think that same sort of idea would be neat at the beginning of the year to get to know everyone. Like “what are you afraid of” and then a “what did you learn.” Even though many of use had the same ideas and slides…we expressed them differently. Out of all the presentation I have done this semester, that was the only one I was 100% comfortable doing because it was all about my learning and what I know now. I ended my Pecha Kucha with blogging. All through university our education profs got us to reflect, reflect our hearts out! One thing about that was only one person got to read it and you never had a chance to grow from feedback or “discussion.” Blogging is out there – meaning anyone can give feedback and anyone help you grow. I find that blogging is all about your thoughts and freedom of reflecting. I think this last reflection class really gave me an idea of how amazing blogs can be. A friend of mine, Jackie, talked about how she was getting awesome feedback from her blog. She talked about how other educators want to talk about her with their class and that is pretty neat. Which gives me hope. Without feedback and hits on your blog it is kinda depressing to post at times. Now that I have place to say, “Hey read my blog,” on Twitter – someone will actually read it. A couple summers ago I tried to blog in the summer but no one ever read it so it was meaningless. Now I have a social network who will follow me and give me feedback – I like the future

P.S. I liked Robin’s idea of a daily photo…so I think I may try it…stay tuned.

Comic from www.gapingvoid.com

ECMP 455 Reflection

wishlow — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:33:10 +0000

ECMP 455 has shown me many new ways to use technology. I will admit I was scared at first. I had taken ECMP 355 two years ago and I hadn’t really learned much more since that class. In this class I have tried many new things: Elluminate, Google Apps, Twitter, Delicious, Wikis, Videos, Mentorship, Social Networking, SecondLife and Digital Storytelling to name a few. In this class I was given many tools to use and play around with and see how they worked for me. Throughout this semester I have built a social network for myself that I use from a professional standpoint. When I had any technology based questions I knew who to ask. I may have not personally known many of them but they were always willing to help. Also the guest speakers who came to our Elluminate sessions every week would teach me something new about a certain aspect of technology. My final project was on Digital Storytelling, but it wasn’t until Allan came to talk about and share his own Wiki, that I really understood what it was about. We were also shown other helpful tools on the internet and what we could use them for (many are listed above).

Some barriers I encountered dealt with the use of my own time. I found that ECMP was times left out of my schedule because I had some much reading to do this semester and I actually kept up with it. My blogging and playing around with all the new technology, tools and ideas we were given was stronger in the beginning then towards the end. Toward the end of the semester I found that all my time was spent writing essays and doing projects. I guess the meeting from my home sometimes got mistaken for my weekly duties.

How have I met the course objectives? Well I created this blogfolio to blog and to also share some of things of have done and created in the past. It is definitely a starting place for me to build on as I beginning teaching. I have also kept a Google Doc for my documented the work I have done throughout this semester. I chose Google Docs because it was a new tool I learned about – even if it was similar to Microsoft Word – but I was able to work on it from any computer and I can share it with my prof.

I thought the mentorship was a wonderful idea. It gave us a chance to work with another classroom somewhere in the world. I was very excited to be part of it. However, my mentorship may have not been as successful as some others. One of the classes I was working with was great except we had limited times to meet. We only got to meet once but we actually has to opportunity to interact with the class via Skype. The class was working on a genetics unit and we read them a story about twins separated at birth. This was a positive experience even though we did only connect a couple times. This teacher also mentioned that when he signed up for the mentorship, he thought we would actually be going into his classroom – so I guess that changed the perspective of the experience when he found out it was all online. The other class I was with was harder to connect with. I had tried a couple things and every time I did there wasn’t any feedback from the class – however these were very young students. I had to initiate everything and I often didn’t hear much back but at least I tried. I had a good experience and a not as good experience; at least I had the opportunity of both.

For my final project we made a Wiki for Digital Storytelling and I worked with Sheri on this project. I had been invited to wiki’s in the past but I had never done much editing or creating. It was a new process at the beginning and the more time I worked with it the better I got. Sheri created it so she had extra options then I had and I spent some time trying to change the colour scheme and then realized she was the only allowed to do it. It was something I eventually learned about. I did some research on digital storytelling and I was amazed by all the resources that are out there. It was neat to organize what I found and hopefully another teacher will use them. We also worked with another teacher and her class. They made digital storyboards and created picture. Then we recorded their voices reading the stories and added the pictures to them afterward. Since I created an Intro Video at the beginning of the year I had gained some video making skill with Windows Movie Maker but we recorded our audio with the kids on Mac laptops. This meant we had to create our digital stories with iMovie. Since it was new to me, it was a bit frustrating. We went in thinking it couldn’t take that long to make a couple videos….well we were wrong. But now I’m pretty good with iMovie. We both added things to the wiki throughout and we each had jobs. It was neat to collaborate on a project and only meet a couple times. The link to our wiki is: http://dstecmp455.wikispaces.com

Gaming in the Classroom

wishlow — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:16:02 +0000

I’ve had a couple days to think about my last ECMP 455 class. We had Erik and Marcel come in and talked about Second Life/Teen Life and how they use it with their classes. However, their students are in middle school. I am going to be an elementary teacher and I wonder if gaming is the right thing to use in the classroom. I downloaded Second Life after class and tried to play around with it. I found it kind of silly because I had no real purpose for it and I was just walking around. In class, they did mention that it is best to have someone show you around Second Life to get used to it and see where everything is. I would need to explore this option to help understand the purpose.

Marcel and Erik also mentioned that there students were spending hours at home on homework that was based on Teen Life. That is great and it is neat to see how intrigued the students were by the use of games and technology that there teachers were using in class. When I look at my internship students, many of them didn’t have computers at home. For Erick and Marcel’s classes, did the students that worked online at home receive a better mark in the end because of the time they spent? Or did all the students have access to computers?

I think any form of technology in the classroom to help complement classroom work is a good idea. But can there be too much? For the students that loved using Teen Life for their social class, were they bored in all their other classroom based classes? What about the schools that just don’t have enough resources to accomplish this? At the school I interned in there were 30 computers in the computer lab and 11 different teachers with students. When I wanted to book the computer lab to work with the students online, it was so hard to find an open time where we could go to the computer lab (that fit in our timetable). The schools that have a computer lab and a laptop cart have such an advantage, because two classes can use that technology at the same time. I found it difficult because I would plan a lesson and then find out the lab was booked at all my available times. Also, the computer and projector could be brought into the classroom for just me to use, but they didn’t work at times and sometimes they would not pick up a wireless connection.

Anyways, back to gaming. In a couple classes I found useful games to use with my students that would help them learn something we were doing in a subject. I used it for math, science and health. The students loved the computer lab and also wanted to go in there for all subjects.

The second part of my ECMP 455 class, Sylvia came in to talk to us about gaming in the classroom. She had said that when looking for good games to use in the classroom, don’t search for educational games. She said that many educational games weren’t as good as others and they were usually not fun to play. I think most of the games I used with my class were educational. I spent hours trying to find good websites with games that I could use. I ended up find three good websites for math that worked with my whole numbers unit. Originally when I was planning the lesson, I just assumed it would be easy to find some good websites to use. I was wrong, I ended up spending at least an hour trying to find a website that would hit my objective and also be useful for the students.

Some concerns I have with using gaming or Teen Life in the classroom on a regular basis: Are you encouraging some students that video games are appropriate? This may not be the case at all. For example, I hate video games but maybe if I was introduced to an awesome gaming website in one of the high school classes, I would enjoy video games more now? Who knows really. Or what if the students go home and spend lots of hours on these games, would the parents be upset with the teacher? If it is educational to the students and it deals with their subjects, I guess it is fine…

I don’t really know though, I am still torn on this issue!

Online Learning vs. Correspondence Learning

wishlow — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:07:41 +0000

In my ECMP 455 class we had a discussion about online learning vs. correspondence learning. I want to clear up why I said “having no deadlines is negative.” I meant this relating to my correspondence class through Athabasca. An online class, like ECMP 455, is different because I meet with my professor and class once a week (online or in person). Also being in contact with your fellow classmates at any time also helps build structure in an online class. If I have questions I am able to ask for help and receive feedback. In correspondence there is no other students to talk with and maybe help understand some things. Through correspondence it is just you and if you have questions you need to call someone and wait on the phone for an answer. I actually told my tutor for my Athabasca class to give me an end date just so I had a date at the end of the tunnel. This tutor refused to just tell me a date. I work better with deadlines but I think even knowing the end date of your class helps to see the end of the tunnel and to work towards it. I prefer due dates because then I know when I am expected to have it finished. Some classes without due dates can still work. I think it all depends on what a person is used to and how they like to work. I think different situations and classes give you a different idea of due dates and no due dates. So as you can see, I would rather be part of an online learning class then a lonely correspondence class.

Time and Effort…?

wishlow — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:46:54 +0000

As a university student it is hard to have a stable income. Since my second year of university I have had a full or part time job. The money I make from my part time job goes towards food, gas and bills. My family is middle class but I feel horrible asking my parents to help support me. I am not a party animal or anything like that, so at least the money isn’t being spent mindlessly. These are random thoughts that make me wonder. In a conversation today with a friend, who also has a part job, we both said that it is hard for us to put a huge amount of time into one school project. Well working our other jobs, we are not able to do homework. Each week I think of what I have for homework and when I can make time to complete it. Since most of my education has also been coupled with a job, it makes me wonder if I ever put forth a FULL effort. Then again, what is my definition of full effort and what is your definition of full effort? I guess time restriction is the biggest issue. Thinking back to all my years of university…would my marks and effort be better without a job? At the same time, I don’t think I would be able to live or keeping going to university if I didn’t have a part time job to make extra money. I do know that some people are in the exact same position and they many still put lots of effort into their work and they are very successful at managing their job and their work load. I am not saying I am not successful and that I am lacking in many of my classes but that would be 20-30 extra hours a week for homework (especially working time during the day when I am the most awake). But I guess my question is…would I put more time and effort into my classes and marks? Who knows…and I don’t want to do it all over again!

Celebrities and Twitter

wishlow — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:41:23 +0000

Lately when I have watched tv, I usually hear at least one celebrity talk about Twitter. I may only realize this now because I actually know what they are talking about or Twitter is becoming very mainstream. For instance, on The Ellen DeGeneres Show she talked about Twitter, and joined it also, after she heard about it from Martha Stewart and Sean “P.Diddy” Combs. Ellen set a goal that she wanted to have a million followers by the end of the day (March 13). I have added a couple others celebrities, just out of interest to see what they Twitter about. Ellen was on Jay Leno also and she talked about Twitter and twittering with Jay. Jay also had it in his monologue at the beginning of the show. Maybe Ellen should be the spokesperson for Twitter instead of American Express and CoverGirl – just an idea. I wish I had as many followers as Ellen. I guess if I was a celebrity I would have as many followers – I don’t even know enough people to make up the amount of followers she has. If I hadn’t already joined Twitter, I would have joined it just to follow Ellen! Great marketing?

Here is Ellen talking about “twittering” and “tweets” on her show.

Check out Alec’s post and featured video dealing with Twitter.

Inspiration From a Child

wishlow — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:42:04 +0000

During my internship I was shown this video of Dalton Sherman, who is extremely inspirational. I had an interview this week with Regina Public, just a screening interview. I should have watched this before my interview and then maybe I wouldn’t have been so nervous. I wish I had his confidence and poise when I got interviewed – you have to understand it was also my first teaching interview. Guess that is something I need to work on!

On another note, Dalton points out that, “In some cases, your all we got…” During my internship there were a couple students that I knew this was somewhat the case. Their home lives were not great and it showed by the behaviours throughout the day. As a teacher, that is one of my goals. To be a positive role model in the school and to make sure my students are in a safe and comfortable environment. Sometimes school is the only place a child feels safe.

Wow, it has been a year already…

wishlow — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:22:30 +0000

Today, I logged on to Twitter and noticed that Alec gave a link to another pre-service teacher’s blog. So I checked it out and he has been blogging about his pre-internship. Reading through some of his posts made me think…WOW, it has been a year since I did my pre-internship. During my pre-internship, time went by so quick and it was hard to believe once it was over that I would be teaching for four straight months in an elementary classroom. My pre-internship went by fast and my internship almost went by as fast! It went by so fast it was hard to enjoy some of the things that were going on in my life at the same time. For those four months, my life was grade 5. My evenings consisted of getting prepared for the next day and marking. My weekends also consisted of some other work related to teaching. However, I still had time for other things too. I may have written it to sound like a hassle, but it wasn’t. I enjoyed doing those things every evening and marking. Even looking at this last semester(ish), I would rather be preparing and marking in the evenings and weekends instead of reading hundreds of pages in a textbook and writing essays and reflections.

As I looked at this other pre-service teacher’s blog, it also made me jealous. He has been able to connect with social networking and he has technology resources that I just found out about this semester. Having these types of social networking on you side, it helps a lot. In my pre-internship I did use technology often but my internship was different. I guess the reason for that is we didn’t have many resources and definitely not the resources some other schools had. We had a computer lab and that was about it. In my internship we had the laptop cart which we could bring to the classroom whenever and we also had a computer lab.

I wish I had the information and knowledge I have gained over the last two months, seven months ago (aka. before my internship).

My Acting Debut

wishlow — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:51:22 +0000

In my ECMP 455 class today we used a Flip Video to make a short video. First we had steps to follow and then next we made up a storyboard. I had the chance to make a acting debut today (unless you include me reading a book video). I was the main person in the first video we made. I must say I do like the end result, however in the last clip the beginning got cut off so it makes for a very awkward and funny ending.

For our final project in this class we are doing digital storytelling, so it was neat to actually make our own. We will be making a couple other to post on our Wiki, so it was a good place to start. Today I wrote up a mini script for a short video and I want to try different ways to compelete it. I was thinking of doing a video and then just pictures with sound. Using both ways will create a comparison to which one works best and how the story comes across.

Hope you enjoy my acting….haha.