Do you whistle while you work?

The other day, Kerrie and I were at the hospital, visiting her grandpa. We were in the elevator with a nurse, rushing off to be somewhere. I whispered to Kerrie, "I want to be a nurse! I think I'll start studying that!"

Used to my random rants, she nonchalantly replied, "Yeah, sure, cuz you have SO much time for that."

"I could go to night school!" I responded, feigning hurt.

But then, we saw her grandpa's catheter bag, and the thought of having to insert that tube quickly made me reconsider my career change. Maybe a therapist? They don't have to do all that nasty stuff, right?

Sometimes, I think about looking into ways that I could get paid to write more. Sometimes, I think about looking into ways I could get paid to do anything more. Is work always going to just be work, no matter what field I'm in? Or, is there a job out there for everyone that they will just LOVE and never grumble about. Sometimes, I feel guilty when I complain about work, or don't want to go in. Shouldn't I love what I do, ALL the time? Or is it just the nature of WORK, that we can't love it all the time? Or can work, not always be WORK????

podcasts and streaming, oh my!

So there was a lot to view, and watch, and listen to this week! There are a lot of great podcasts out there! My favorite site was Learn Out Loud. I was really impressed w/ the audiobook podcasts available for free! I'm glad I canceled my subscription to an audiobook site, because there's a lot out there for free that I could listen to for online or download through ITunes. I listened to Beowulf...not that I understood a lot of it (The site says it was meant to be listened to, but I need the footnotes!)

My delicious account is now filled with podcast related sites. There's just so much out there.

Snow Days!

Went up to Mammoth this weekend and saw my first snowfall! Had a blast visiting, but I don't know how people could LIVE in the snow for months at a time! Scraping ice off your ENTIRE car, watching for black ice, icicles and snow falling off rooftops, dressing in multiple layers, shoveling snow, laying out salt, slipping and sliding around....seems like I'd be late anywhere I had to go during the winter months! But it sure was beautiful!

Fall colors:



The view from our motel:





My one catch of the trip:

Wikis

This week we learned about what a powerful tool for collaboration wikis provide. In many ways, I see blogs and wikis as similar, and even interchangeable. I think it just depends on what you want your students to do: merely comment on the content or actively build, add to, change and actually interact with the content.

My classmates and I have reflected over the last few weeks on the ways blogs can be used in our classrooms. We've come up with ideas as journaling, responding to prompts, and showing different ways of solving the same math problem. I think that wikis can be used for these same activities. The one thing that makes wikis unique is that they allow for an active participation in the creating and forming of the content. Students not only state their ideas, they edit the ideas of others, they remove things they see as unnecessary.

One final reflection, if wikis have been around since '94, why when I type the word is it underlined in red??? Granted, I only recently learned about wikis, but the word hasn't even made it ino the dictionary yet???

Educational blogs

It took a lot of searching (I searched math, math instruction, fifth grade, etc.) on Technorati, but I finally found a blog that I really like. It is a fifth grade teacher's website at edublog called Mrs. Mercer's website.

I like it because Mrs. Mercer's school apparently uses Open Court too, so there are a lot of great links given. In fact, there are great links related to all subjects! She also has good examples on her site of how to use blogging for reflections made by students, and there are also examples of podcasts that students have made to demonstrate what they have learned as well as podcasts (or MP3s?) of class discussions!

The site hasn't been updated since last June, the end of the previous school year, so hopefully she's just building community and discussing cyber-bullying right now, and will begin a more current and updated site soon!

Technology Overload!

I just completed a two week course on how to use my Activboard, during which I spent a lot of time playing the with new hardware and software, designing new lessons, reading and posting in forums, and watching tutorials.

I've been taking this course at the same time, learning about ALL SORTS of new tools on the Read/Write web that I never knew about (aggregators, RSS, wikis, social bookmarking and MORE!).

And today I started another tech class through UCLA extension on integrating technology into the classroom.

The last two nights, I've had DREAMS about clicking here, cutting this image, copying it here, moving things on my Activboard, going to this site......I'm learning so much, and it has all become so much a part of my daily life, that I'm actually DREAMING about it.

But man am I loving all that I'm learning!!!

Here goes nothing!

Well, here you have it: my first blog.

I really enjoyed the readings for this week. I definitely think it will take a lot of practice and playing around with different blogs before I will feel comfortable starting a class blog, and more importantly, before I'll be prepared enough to defend the merit and logic behind a class blog to my principal...because I KNOW I'll have to defend it. Or maybe I'll just forward him this week's readings? Is there any research that blogging directly impacts CST scores, because I KNOW that would work? =D

As I looked through the different class blog examples, I was really impressed by how often posts were read! Some student blogs had over 800 views! As I write this, I'm excited by the thought of people reading and commenting on my words, so I can imagine the thrill that over 800 views would bring to a student. How inspired and excited they must be to write that next blog!

One thing that I'm struggling with is which blog service to use. From the readings and suggestions of our instructor, it seemed that blogmeister.com and 21classes.com are my choices. The readings suggested that blogger.com not be used for a classroom. I'd like to know more about the pros and cons of each service. I suppose this will just take some playing around. One thing I found odd was that 21classes wanted my address when I signed up???

I'm also struggling with whether I should set up a class blog for my students and parents to view and comment on, or if I should have students set up their own blogs. Again, I think it will just take more exposure to the services before I'll know which course is best. I noticed that w/ blogmeister, the students' blogs all had the same picture and color scheme...I like that.

I'm really excited by the prospect of this new and exciting writing tool, and can't wait to learn more!!