Finally Done my Eportfolio

As of Friday I finished my Eportfolio. I feel this assignment was very valuable and something that will be a working document that I can add to whenever I want. I have to be honest I was a little skeptical at first about the Eportfolio. I was kinda confused about how it would work for applying for jobs. after reading Jenn Hall`s blog about the her eportfolio and how she applied to work in Mexico and how easy it was to just give the employer the web address to see her portfolio. I now see the how useful they can be not only for applying for jobs but also as an ongoing document that will last me mu whole life. I really enjoyed working on Dream weaver and I thought it was very easy to do. I very much enjoyed the assignment and I`m glad that it was assigned to us. I know prior to the class i would not have made an electric portfolio and now that I have I am glad that I have!
Here is the Link to my eportfoliohttp://education.uregina.ca/web/willer2h/eportfolio/All%20about%20me_clip_image002.jpg

What Kind of Disney Princess Are You?

You are Jasmine. You are loyal and would visit the ends of the earth for what you believe. You would never let obstacles stand in the way of true love.

I just filled out this survey asking what kind of Disney princess are you and I am Jasmine. You should take the quiz and see what you are the address is here
Try it. It is fun!

The Facebook Skit

I was sent this from a friend and I thought that it was really funny. I have join facebook and I do believe that it has some great social purposes and fun to see where your friends are from highschool, but this skit does question, what people are doing with your profile and possibly if you are not careful people could be stocking you! Enjoy the clip though it is very funny.

Windup Laptop

While reading the Readers Digest in the April issue I notice a article aboutwindup laptops. The laptops are powered with a wind-up crank, have very low power consumption and will let children interact with each other while learning. Manufactures
plan to have millions of $100 machines in production within a year. These laptops will have all the modern trappings; mikem speaker, camera, USB ports, a screen that's visible in bright sunlight, even a wireless network between laptops in a classroom. The laptopss will be sold directly to governemnts for distribution though schools by the end of the year.
For more info go to www.laptop.org.
I think this is a wonderful idea that will help many 3rd world countries. I would like to be a great congraduations out for OLPC, the company who invented these laptops, super work guys!!

MySpace - Tech Task #9

Last week I participated in the session "Why Youth Love MySpace" on the TappedIn site. I have to admit, it was a really cool experience. It's amazing that professional development can be so global and versatile. It was so interesting to hear all of the different perspectives in the group. There were University students such as myself, teachers, counsellors, and parents from a wide background covering a very wide age range.

Karen Connaghan lead the discussion. She dispelled a lot of the myths parents and educators believe about MySpace and tried to focus on the purpose and benefits of it. Something that came up again and again from the "paranoid" parents in the session were comments such as "it's not safe", "they don't know how to communicate in real life" and "it's just a tool for cyber-bullying". Ironically, I don't think any of these people have a MySpace or really understand how it works. Karen responded to these comments by saying that "moral panic is a common reaction to teenagers when they engage in practices not understood by adult culture". And that sums it up right there! Adults do not understand MySpace, so they are very quick to determine it's evil and should be banned from schools. This is a myth that needs to be addressed in our society! There are good and bad things that come with almost everything in life but sometimes we have to just accept some bad things to get the good.

So, what does MySpace really do for youth? It gives them a tool for socialization, hanging out and shaping their identities. It allows them to form their own culture and way of communicating. On MySpace, youth can express themselves through photos, fashion, music, media and the written word. This gives youth a tool to explore their identify at an influential age.

Something that I found interested was the idea of using the word "friend" as a verb and not as a noun. I became to think about this and how the term friend has change and how with these sites allow you "befriend" other people, when is essence who have just meant that person. Many of the adults at the dissusion do not understand how the "friend" has changed and when they look at the daughter's/son's friends list, they fear that these "friends" might be pretators. For my me I feel that these sites are a way to connect to other people that live across the world and can be useful. Although, I do believe that you have to teach your kids to be aware of what do on these sites and to teach them that there are people out there that can hurt you and to be save.

My Space!

This one is for all the people obsessed with my space!! You know who you are!

My Podcast Assignment

The Show From Zefrank


So i finally got around to tech task #7 where you have to listen to a podcast. It has been super busy with other assignment that I kept putting it off (opps!) So I started looking for a good podcast to listen to about a week ago. I did find two and I added them to my Itunes, they were about the new gadgets, that are being sold and how they work. Well, to be honest, I totally didn't get what they were saying and I was getting very bored. I wanted something that I could relate to and enjoy watching. Then after class, i went to the ZEFRANK show website that Alec had shown us in class. I just went to the website to check it out and I really enjoyed it. Then I left it for a while . so today I found some time to work on it and I thought I would use one of his vodcasts/ videoblog to use for the assignment.

I listened to his July 28,2066 show, where he talks about "just playing with [things]" to figure out how they work. He mentions that if he wants to figure out how to photo show pictures, he just does it, by playing with it, without reader the manual. He states that reading the manual is a waste of time and by the time you read it and become an experts on it, the technology you are using is obsolete. This just reminded me of the presentation our Math class had on Math makes sense. The speaker stated that students need to become problem solvers and not be told what to do all the time. This is outline in the material from Math Makes Sense program. At the beginning of each lesson their is a part where the students are presented a problem and they work together to solve it, without any prior teaching from teaching.

This idea was also, brought in class by Alec, who suggests that we live a society where education like technology is taught in time, meaning you learn what you need to know at that particular time. If the child knows it then why explain it to them.

I complete agree with all of these perspectives. I believe, as teachers we should be teaching your students to not be dependent on the teacher. The Speaker from Math Makes Sense, is a classroom teacher and he explains, when it is math time in his class the students know what is expected of them and he says, he doesn't even have to be there for his students to work on the problem solving procedure. I found this amazing. I would love it for my students to be this independent!

As for the assignment for listening to a podcast, I think it could be a great resource to use in the classroom. I know sometimes the voice of the teacher can get very boring and when you get a chance to listen to someone different then it is a great thing.