Last post for class!

After this post I can finally write whatever I want on this blog!

What I got out of the videos was to live in suspicion. As paranoid as that sounds, seriously, it's a freaky online world. You can't just hope that people are going to be honest as it's open to everyone. Never give out your passwords, or any identifiers. Even if you don't people can still figure you out so don't trust anyone online you don't know in person. And if someone does start to get into your life (send threats or whatever), let others know and get the police involved. Be safe and the internet can be great!

4th Article

I chose to read an article entitled “Setting Family Standards for Entertainment” by Carla Dalton (found in the Ensign, Jun 2001, 26) and I really enjoyed her incites. I particularly enjoyed her analogies comparing a big wave getting all her stuff wet on vacation to how we often trust sandy foundations in the world, assuming we are on safe ground, only to be flooded with a deluge of evil. I plan to teach my children that when something initially shocks and offends us we should quickly eliminate such things from our lives, before they have a chance to gradually dull our spiritual sensitivities. Also, I loved her incite that “if I, as a parent, want to remain credible in the eyes of my children, I cannot justify listening to or viewing the kind of entertainment that I have asked my children not to participate in.” There are many movies that I watch right now that I wouldn’t want my children to watch and I am realizing the importance of eliminating those things from my life before I actually have children and thus avoid hypocrisy. Lastly, I can remind family and friends that when we turn the television (or a movie) we are inviting guests into our homes, and we should make sure those guests will not corrupt our families from the inside out.

My Lesson

This week I actually did a lesson using technology. The kids are reading a book called "Skinnybones" but the problem is it's all about baseball but not one of the kids play baseball. So I put together a powerpoint that explained some of the vocab words they've had on pictures of things (a baseball diamond with centerfield labled with big arrows, etc.), and videos of abstract ideas (one of someone bunting, pitching and grounders). It went really well and with the use of a projector everyone was able to see it well.

Finally!

This last week I finally saw some technology being used in class. The kids went to the computer lab and were working on a program called PAWS that teaches them to type by playing games. It was great and the race car game was the best.

Practicum week 2

This week my mentor teacher actually did use technology to reinforce some math concepts. She used a program called Riverdeep and I think the students really enjoyed it. I decided I want to put together a powerpoint presentation about baseball to reinforce some of the new terms and ideas they are learning about in one of the books they are reading called Skinny Bones.

1st week in practicum

This was my first week in the classroom, so while I didn't see any technology used, I could already see some of the attitudes related to technology flourish. The students are scheduled to work in the computer lab once a week; but this week they were behind in reading so they skipped their lab appointment. I actually won't even be teaching anything till Monday so I haven't, or won't have anytime this week, an opportunity to teach w/ technology. But I know the students are compiling a book of published stories for halloween; I was thinking that if it wouldn't be too expensive, I could scan in their stories in a computer and read them together as a class. I'll talk it over with my mentor teacher and find out the possibilities .

Report on others

While observing some of the others tours I really liked the idea about mapping expeditions across the continent. I really think this will help students know what happened.

Google Map Tour

I made a google map tour! It is directed to teach:
Science - 5th Grade, Objective 2 Explain how volcanoes, earthquakes, and uplift affect Earth’s surface

B. Give examples of different landforms that are formed by volcanoes, earthquakes, and uplift (e.g., mountains, valleys, new lakes, canyons).
C. Describe how volcanoes, earthquakes, and uplift change landforms.

Basically showing the difference between cinder cones, composite volcanoes(stratovolcano), shield volcanoes, and lava domes.

Google Earth

Today I learned alot of cool features of Google earth. I learned that all .kmz files are google earth files and are great for giving tours of landmarks you might be studying (i.e. Revolutionary War) or look at locations for historical books or historical fiction. Due to the funding problem for fieldtrips, I think this is a great opportunity to virtually take students to places only seen in imagination.

I liked this site for the 5th grade curriculum about the Revolutionary War sites @
http://crssa.rutgers.edu/projects/special/revwar/gallery/google_earth/revwarnj_alldata__advgeo2007.kmz

Video Watching

The first video I got to watch was Michelle Calls. It was so cute I nearly wanted to hurl. :) But it was good and it had a surprise ending when they all talked together at the end.
Then I watched Juliet’s. I never thought about presenting a song as a movie; or even making a movie w/ the class using a song they know.
I finished by watching Nicole’s. No comment. :)

The Sound of Silence

Reflection

I found that this assignment was much easier than I thought it would be and I really feel that 5th grades could do it.

Storyboard template

Language Arts - 5th Grade , Standard 6, Objective 3:Use structural analysis and context clues to determine meanings of words.

Students will demonstrate their meanings to poetic lyrics of a song through taking pictures of their ideas and creating a movie to go with it.

This is my interpretation, through photography, of Simon and Garfunkle's The Sound of Silence.





Hello darkness, my old friend,













I’ve come to talk with you again,














Because a vision softly creeping,













Left its seeds while I was sleeping,















And the vision that was planted in my brain














Still remains

Within the sound of silence.

What I learned from others

I really liked how well organized others were laid out. They looked like notes and I liked that format better.

The Tech Savvy Teacher

Activity: Temperature of water

Standard: 3, Objective 2a
Observe and measure characteristics of water as a solid and liquid.

In the olden days, you pulled out your twenty pound microscope, gathered some slides and swabbed some specimens on them, then watched as your students all tried to gather around to take a peek through the lens. Today there are such things as digital microscopes which can be projected on a computer screen for all to see, and can even capture video. Other savvy options include computer programs to record the eclipses of the moon. With all of the many technological options for school teachers today to put a little "oomph" in lesson plans, we decided to take a test drive on the wide open road of advancements for the classroom and put one of these new inventions to the test.

To teach the characteristics of water we began by putting ice water in a pot and watching as the temperature increased, heating it to the evaporation point, and then collecting the evaporating water with a glass plate, allowing it to condense to form water. During this process we recorded our data with the digital thermometer and tracked the increase in temperature, noting the change in the state of the water from solid to liquid, making observations along the way, hypothesizing about the changes that might take place.


To the left is a fuzzy picture of ice water. It is important to get the water as a solid to start this process. Ask the students to hypohesize what will happen when the water is heated up. What will happen to the temperature?


Step two. Connect digital thermometer to computer and measure water temperature.

Step Three. Apply heat to the ice water making sure to chart the temperature increase of the water. Rationalize with the students if, and why their hypothesis in step one was or was not correct. Discuss the changing state of water and teach how the molecules move faster with heat and thus flow more freely.




Step four. Watch as the digital thermometer charts the temperature of the water. It should start to boil around 100 degrees. If the altitude is high this could be slightly lower as in our example it was about 95 degrees.





Be careful to take the necessary safety precautions.





After you have demonstrated how water turns into steam, then you can show the condensation process by:

Putting a lid over the pot and watching as the water formed begins to drip everywhere. Finally you can analize your data collected on the computer. Wasn't that fun?

Bookmarks

Today we worked alot on bookmarks. It took forever and was kinda annoying but I could definately see the advantages to having all these great links in the same spot that I can access from any computer. It was under my Delicious account. I labled it on here as Bookmarks.

More Appropriate

I was thinking that I should find a picture of Suzanne and I when not in swim suits, for obvious reasons, and I got one! This was taken when we did a weekend trip up to Logan to visit her sister's family.

And I wanted to post a video so you could see how crazy she is if you want.

Some reminder notes

Today in class we learned what RSS is: Really Simple Syndication. It basically summarizes all your favorite web-pages and puts them all together. www.sharpreader and www.webreader are a couple free ones. This means the information comes to you rather than looking for it. I'm going to do it through my G-mail account. Whatev.

Here's a picture

A couple of people have asked me about Suzanne so I wanted to put a picture on here and add a short explaination about how we started dating: she was in my very first ward in Utah so I met her in July of 2005 and we were good friends. We never really hung out but would catch up in passing. Then this last summer, in July my brother left for California to spend the Summer doing EFY and vacationing and I was suddenly friendless. When heading to the library one day I saw Suz and her room-mate Liz laying on a blanket on their grass reading a book so I invited myself over. We started hanging out all the time (mostly just doing reading parties, swimming and playing ultimate frisbee) and I began to notice how much we have in common. We did a road trip to California and I fell in love. This is a picture of us on the beach of San Clemente.

Trying to figure it out

I have never done a Blog or anything like it; however, I can definately see how beneficial it would be (particularly for parent involvement) in a teacher's life so I'm excited to give it a try.