A Day in the Life

Finally a Return of the Writer

2011-06-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

I've been obviously out of the whole blogging world for a long time. But I'm back, at least for today...... So the goofy moment I thought I could share happened during a presentation on Technology in one of my summer classes. The presenter posed the question "How big is your flash drive?" Without even raising my hand I said (in dead honesty) "about the size of my thumb." The presenter responded by saying "no, about 2 gigs." hahaha. I felt so embarrassed I just laughed out loud. hahaha. I don't think my teacher has liked me very much since that day.

Idaho Moments

2010-12-01T19:14:00.000-08:00

Every time I visit my nephews and niece in Idaho I always have funny moments to come home with. Here the goofy snapshots from the last 2 trips.

Sophie (age 4) "Kate I memorized a scripture, John 3:16: For God forgot the world that....." I was rolling on the floor, hahaha, she couldn't even finish.

Sophie: We were looking at a pciture of a frumpy fat old librarian with thick glasses and a short boy haircut and she turns to me and says "Hey Kate its you" dead serious. haha. Good to know what impression I leave on her.

Sophie: We're making dinner one night and she turns to her mom all of the sudden and asks "Mom, What color do you think my wedding dress will be?"

Sophie: We were watching a movie and a couple kissed and she turns to me and says "Kate, you need to find one of those" all matter of factly. ha. She's so right. If only you "found" that sort of thing.

Tanner (age 10) "My friend has to brush his teeth every day or they turn yellow!! His mom makes him brush everyday, can you believe it" [How boring] haha. To add more... I looked over and his teeth were bright yellow. haha.

They crack me up, especially Sophie. Oh how I love to be around them....

There's a first for everything!!!

2010-12-01T15:41:00.000-08:00

Somebody asked me a computer question and I actually was able to HELP them!!!!!!!!!!! This deserves its own post!!! It was in Excel and I actually new something more than someone else!!!!! What a dawning of a new day. Maybe this tech class is really helping me!!!!

Redirection

2010-11-29T11:22:00.000-08:00

So... For a project I had to learn to create and maintain a blog....which I successfully completed, but i figuared since I now have it up and running, with a good title, I might as well continue posting.

Goofy stuff always seems to happen to me. I'm like Bella in Twilight, I attract disaster and awkwardness. ha. Anyway I've never been good at recording the goofy stuff so I thought this might be a fresh new start for me.

Snapshot number one: Last night was an interesting one
12 a.m. I read and fell asleep.
12:30 a.m. I woke up and realized I hadn't locked the doors so I went down and fixed that.
1 a.m. my home teacher called, I texted him back with no reply
4 a.m. The snow plow was beeping and plowing directly below my widow
5-7 a.m. my roommate is up with the light on bustling around our room
Oh what a night and start to this week, I shall be more grateful this week for silent nights....

Twitter Best Practices

2010-10-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Here are some ideas on how to improve your twitter account. With my thoughts and reasoning as well.
https://twitter.com/twitter101/best_practices

Use a casual, friendly tone in your messages. I believe being friendly and professional in your tweets will gain you the trust of your students and their parents.

While you shouldn’t feel compelled to follow everyone who follows you, do respond to some questions or comments addressed to you. Twitter is a great way to build relationships with people you can't see often, responding to them will build that friendship.

If you like a particular message, retweet it. People often appreciate the sharing and amplification of their ideas, so look to retweet cool stuff. Passing on important or fun information to parents will help everyone stay connected and will give others good ideas and information.

Post links to articles and sites you think folks would find interesting—even if they’re not your sites. This is a good way to pass on greater information about specific topics to parents or to other teachers

Make sure your tweets provide some real value. Make your tweets meaningful and not just wasting the parents or students time.

Don’t spam people. Twitter’s following model means that you have to respect the interests and desires of other people here or they’ll unfollow you. The most common way to run afoul of that understanding—and to thus look like a spammer—is to send unsolicited @messages or DMs, particularly when you include a promotional link.

2010-10-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

This is a video about volcanic eruptions. I could use it in a science unit.

2010-10-07T20:58:00.000-07:00

Safe Blogging Tips

2010-09-28T18:51:00.000-07:00

Included are some tips for blogging safely.

From the Website Microsoft Online Safety...

1. "Never offer any personal information including your last name, contact information, home address, phone numbers, school's name, e-mail address, last names of friends or relatives, instant messaging names, age, or birth date."
2. "Assume what you publish on the Web is permanent. Anyone on the Internet can easily print out a blog or save it to a computer." The bad part about communicating on-line with someone is that what you say can forever be documented and saved. If you don't want information out in the future, don't post it now. You can never take it back.

From the Website money.cnn.com
3. "Be Exclusive You don't have to let the whole world watch. You can set up a blog that is password-protected. Blogging services such as LiveJournal let you decide who gets to see all or parts of your blog. Turns out, you can also block Google and other major search engines from listing your blog in Internet search results. To do so, you need to create a special file called a "Robots Text File.

Lastly and Most importantly...From the website Kims Educational Blogging

4. Keep students' identities private (have students use aliases, don't mention location or school in postings)
5. Don't post pictures of yourself, your friends, your community, etc. on your blog
6. Only post things that are appropriate for school and family, your blog is part of your "Online Portfolio" that will remain for years to come
7. Monitor who can and cannot leave comments on your blog (only allow people who know you to read and comment on blog posts)
8. Control who can and cannot see your blog
9. Don't respond to rude, mean, or embarrassing comments, delete them before they are posted to your blog.
10. Don't meet people that you meet online
11. If you wonder whether or not something is appropriate to post on your blog, don't post it. If you really want to share the information, ask a teacher or adult how you can post the information safely.
12. Be careful and use your head!
(These last ideas are are specifically made to help the educational blogger, so if you are blogging in a school setting use these to make sure you are safe!!)

The Pedegogy of Blogs

2010-09-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

WOW!!!! I have entered a new realm of life... The life of educational blogging!!! I have seen, and believe I will continue to see many great changes in education due to the blogging world. It was interesting to investigate other educational blogs and learn how teachers around the world were using them to distribute information. I really like how "Room 9 Nelson Central" used blogging to share the students work. It allowed them to integrate literature and facts and share that with others. It was also used as an editing tool; people can post what they thought of the project and what they learned. I thought that Mrs.Cassidy (Mrs. Cassidy's blog) was very wise to share with parents and others the Language Arts independent teaching program through a video, so that parents can see how their children are learning and see them in the classroom. Very ingenious. Lastly I loved how Portable B Top Dogs blog allowed me to get to know each individual student via their own personal blog, and profile. I also appreciated that I could see postings organized by the student that created them. What a personal way to distribute your students work.... I know I am just barely starting to scratch the surface of blogging but I am very excited to continue learning how blogging with change my future classroom.