TGIF!!

Hooray! It's Friday! Its actually been "My Friday" since yesterday at 2:30 after Elng, but its actually Friday today! It feels so good to not have another class until Tuesday at 11:30! I dedicated last night to my Health class, and today is my designated ecmp day! DOUBLE HOORAY! :) A little off topic (*shockingly*), but I don't believe I've ever actually verbalized the word "hooray", yet today its come up several times.

Since I woke up this morning (afternoon) I've drank three cups of coffee, and read about a million blogs. I've actually been enjoying them a fair bit, and I feel really guilty for not finishing my intro video yet. Its all ready to go, but I can't find my microphone! If I wasn't so broke, I'd give in and go to Walmart and just get another one, but I really don't want to have to do that. I haven't actually seen it since my last Elluminate session in 355, but I'm SURE its here in Regina somewhere.

I'm currently listening to the hour long presentation Dean suggested we listen to, and I'm really thinking about building the blogging community for myself. I really wish that some of my old educators were bloggers as well, as I feel that connection would be very helpful in my own teaching (and perhaps help their lessons to evolve with technology as well). I didn't realize how much twitter was used by people in education, and I really feel behind in the times when it comes to this. I'm still exploring, but I'm still pretty useless when it comes to anything other than tweeting. (I don't think thats the present tense of tweet, but like I said, I'm still learning :) ) I thought it was a great idea to tweet (?) after creating a new blog post to allow followers to be informed when this has happened.

This picture may seem random in the context of this post, however, I really had to put it somewhere. These signs have been popping up all over the place and I think its great. As a waitress, there is nothing more annoying than trying to converse with a customer who can't put his or her blackberry down for three seconds to order. Okay, sorry... off topic again..

I'm not proud of what I've done..

I just drove across town to KFC and picked up a 5 hot wings combo, 3 chicken strips with poutine, a large diet pepsi, and a McCain cake. Yes, a whole cake. For supper. Just one. Now I'm off to prepare a lesson for my health class on nutrition. I'm such a hypocrite.

Already Overwhelmed

This was my first full week of classes, and I'm already SO busy! It is so ridiculously hard going from having three weeks off, to already have hours and hours of homework to do in each of my five classes this term. It is good to be back in some ways, but holy cow! I've had laundry sitting in my dryer for 3 days now, just because I haven't actually found enough time to take them out and fold them. :)
Pardon the interruption..... People on Family Feud are so embarassingly ignorant. Its on as background noise right now and I just paid enough attention to hear "Name something that stinks up a kid's locker" One of the answers suggested was "a pet, like a gerbil", followed by "a helmet". It frustrates me.. it really does.
Anyway, I've started on my intro video for ecmp so you'll be seeing it soon. I actually drove all the way back to Springside to pick up my flip in order to do it the way I want to. Okay... I better go do something productive, because I really have nothing else to say :) Later days

9 months later....

Holy cow. I can't believe I haven't blogged in 9 months lol. To be perfectly honest, I completely forgot about it. As I look over my older posts, I realize the last time I wrote anything was before my trip. Since then one of my best friends has become pregnant AND had a child, I went on a two month trip to Australia, I moved to Regina, got a new job, completed another semester of university.... this all, by the way, is just off the top of my head. I'm sure more stuff has happened (I should hope so anyway) but if I continue on right now, I don't know what else I will be able to talk about later.
New semester, new look. As soon as I logged on to blogger I felt ill with the color scheme and layout so for the last hour or so I've been playing around on here again, and I've decided this will do for now. I have full intention on actually keeping up with this blog this year, and hopefully can find as much time to dedicate to it as I have found to dedicate to facebook. Oh facebook... you WILL be the end of me. The sick part is that I find myself looking at the same things over and over, and hope that soon SOMEONE will post something new, or put up new pictures. The amount of times that this actually happens however, makes me sick. I think I just need more friends of something. I need someone interesting enough to keep my attention, while discouraging me from logging in at the same time. Too much to ask? Maybe. But at the same time, how on earth am I supposed to keep up with my Marc Emery updates if not for facebook. Anyway, take this as a fresh introduction for me, as the new semester begins. Lets rock.

It's official!

The flight is booked, and I'm going to Australia May 17th! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. And now with only one final exam to go (on Friday) all I have to do is work work work and make some money for my trip. For those of you who didn't know, my boyfriend, Bryce is down there right now, he went to travel for a little while, and asked me to join him once my schooling was done for the summer. Now that this is all decided, is, of course, when everything starts going horribly wrong, ie my car dying in the carwash and having to be repaired (hence my absense in the last ecmp class), and my camera display being all messed up.... its just one thing after another! But, I suppose, money isn't made for keeping. Life's too short... yadda yadda yadda. And I did get my plane ticket for a pretty good price, ($1000 cheaper than what Bryce paid for his in February). Anyway, just thought I'd share my awesome news. Catch ya laters.

My last Tech Task ...*sniff sniff...... My PODCAST

Special thanks to my parents for volunteering their voices for my podcast. I didn't do much editing in audacity, for I thought the raw content added to the overall presentation. I liked the idea of having a background image, so I simply put everything together in movie maker. I know, this is twice as long as the tech task instructions asked for, but sometimes three minutes is simply not enough. Enjoy.

Mentorship Reflection

Hands down, this was the coolest project I have ever done for a University class. I’m all for social learning, and the fact that I was able to connect with so many students from as far away as Fredericksburg Virginia absolutely blew me away. This project gave me the opportunity to try out Skype for the first time, and for many of the students I spoke with, it was their first time as well. We learned together and we got to discuss how cool it was that this sort of meeting was possible. I was placed in a grade 9 English classroom taught by Susan Carter-Morgan. She allowed me to join their wiki (another first for me) and also sent me links to each of her students’ blogs. On their blogs, they discussed project ideas, and their own reflections from what they had been learning about, much like our classroom blogs! She encouraged me to peruse their blogs, and I soon found myself getting right into it without realizing it. I offered suggestions as to how to go about writing and researching papers, encouraging them to try new things, and just stopping in to say Hi once in a while! They were very appreciative of my help and I thought it was so neat when they would visit my blog and ask about Saskatchewan, and University and what not. At the beginning of this project, they were studying the play “The Importance of being Earnest” which I was very excited about. I had actually studied that play in my English 110.6, so I was able to help out a bit there. Their next project was a research paper on a controversial topic of their choice. Once again, I was all over that, because that is exactly what I love to write about! I was able to offer suggestions, and show the students that there are two sides to every issue that really needs to be understood before writing about one particular side.
Looking back on it now, I really wish I would have been able to spend more time with this project, and I’m really considering keeping up with it after this semester is done. If it weren’t for my computer crashing mid-semester, I know I could have helped them out a lot more, but they helped me out a lot too. I really find it neat that all of us in these two classes were able to form relationships with teachers around the world, and that the internet isn't really a scary place all the time. I'd definitely consider doing a project like this with any future classroom I may have, sharing thoughts and ideas with other classrooms around the globe. Its a great learning experience, and allows students to benifit from each other through this awesome technology we have been offered. Thanks for the experience Dean