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.