A Gril like Me- Our we teaching our children to have poor body images

In this video created by a High school student, she examines how society inadvertently teaching our children to have poor body images of themselves and question their own very existence. In the video, many women ages 16-18 years old make comments about being inferior to the other more dominant race. Saying, they never felt pretty or adequate compared to the white girls. Many girls made the comments of trying to be more white in order to fit it. for example, bleaching their skin with skin bleachers, just to have more lighter skin, that is closer to the general population. one women expressed feeling that she could not be a princess because she was not white and only white people could be princesses.

Later in the video, we saw an experiment redone, by the film making, wanting to know if this concept of poor body image was learned at a young age. the experiment went like this: the child of African decent was presented two dolls. a black one and a white one. the children were asked to to pick the doll that was the nice doll or the doll they would more likely want to play with. The film making tested 21 children and out of the 21 children 15 of the children picked the white doll.

My question is why. Why is society trained to think that if we you are not a white, skinning, blond head girl, you are seen as being ugly. How is this passed on. Is it through the media, where all you seen is white girls, possible, but i like to think that there is African American women out the setting good role modeling for our students. Then how to you explain why women at Asian decent surgically get eyelinds. I believe that something is wrong with our society when only a very few amount women represent what all women should look like. I would really like to know who set these judgments in our society, because they are creating a world of women with poor body images.
-Heather

Thanks Ecomp

Wow, has research ever changed. Thinking about the days when you used of used book for the library and this would be your only source of information you could obtain. Now we have the World Wide Web and there is so much information out there it is becoming more easier some times to just go to the library instead. The internet is an amazing tool if used correctly. Students can find almost anything out there, whether appropriate or not. I know this has been repeated over and over again, but as teachers we need to set guidelines for our students, or to create a hot list, in order to protect our students. This is why i believe the moodle or a web page that controls which sites a students can attend is very important. I know for myself, before this class I was aware of the importance of site protection but I never knew of what kind a tools to use or software that would work. Well thanks to this class I certainly do now! Thanks!

Making A Difference!

So I went to the you tube sit that Alec had on his blog about a women with autism and working with her language. If you haven't not see it you must. It's an eye opening experience.



I have worked with autistic people for 4 years now and I couldn't help but think about the people I work with and how she reminded me of my clients at work. Before watching this video I thought I had a great understanding of autism and how an person with autism might communicate. I knew that just because they cannot communicate with our standard language they will find ways how to communicate on their own, whether by pointing, facial expression, body position, or straight noises. I guess I never thought that I person who cannot speak would be able to read and spell words. I know it was very poor of me to think that it's impossible to teach a person with autism to read and write. I guess through this video i was amazed at the degree of ability she could do. I know this sounds bad but, what I wanted to say is that through this video I realized that just because the child or person with autism cannot communicate in our spoken language they can still have thought that is intelligent and feel oppressed by the our societies views directed towards them.

in my EPHYS we have been working with the idea of to educate our students on differences in the classrooms and how we all learn different form each other. To help our students understand being different does not make you a freak. I believe that this site would be an excellent tool to show middle years or High schools students to show them that people with autism are as normal as you and me, they just learn might communicate differently.
-Heather

Hello Everyone Out There!
So last night, Thursday I went to Morgan Mayer's CD release concert. If you are anything like me, you probably haven't heard about her. The funny thing was that once I heard her single I knew the song. It's funny the song has been played on the radio and such but I didn't know who sang it. I was pretty excited once I figure out that the song I have been singing to for the last couple weeks was a girl who lives in Regina, goes to school at Campbell and works at Pita pit!!! It's crazy how we look at Regina as a place where no one will find there break and that you MUST go to Toronto or Vancouver to "Make it big"! This is not to say that Moran it huge by any means but I believe that she will be very soon and to think I can say that I saw her when she first started off!!
She is really good! If you want to take a look here is a link to her music.
Morgan Mayer
Also check out her her my space

Hello Everyone Out There!
So last night, Thrusday I went to Morgan Mayer's CD release concert. If you are anything like me, you probably havn't heard about her. The funny thing was that once I heard her her single I knew the song. It's funny the song has been played on the radio and such but I didn't know who sang it. I was pretty excited once I figure out that the song I have been singing to for the last couple weeks was a girl who lives in Regina, goes to school at Campbell and works at Pita pit!!! It's crazy how we look at Regina as a place where no one will find there break and that you MUST go to Toronto or Vancouver to "Make it big"! This is not to say that Moran it huge by any means but I believe that she will be very soon and to think I can say that I saw her when she first started off!!
She is really good! If you want to take a look here is a link to her music.
Morgan Mayer
Also check out her her my space!

This got me to thinking of the talent we have in Saskatchewan. Many hockey players form our province have made to the NHL. Also looking, at Canadian Idol and how many competitors have made the top 10 for Saskatchewan. Look at Tyler Lewis, a boy form Rockglen, a guy who had voice training form my Friends mother. Inclusion I would like the people who say that Saskatchewan produces no talent to retract their statements! There might might be few of us in this province but we have talent and can make a difference.

Why we should use blogs in our classrooms!

Well I have only been in this class for 2 weeks but I am beginning to see the great effect technology can have on your students. I am starting to see how you can use blogs in the classroom as a useful teaching strategy. A teacher miss Kathy Cassisy using blogs in her grade 1/2 class. The students are able to create their own blogs which then are connected to the teacher's blog. Students post stories, assignments they have done, and then each student can comment each others blogs. I think it is amazing that grade 1/2's are being taught how to this on their own. In a time text book and paper materials will use be gone, it's great to teach students at an early age these skills.
After reading the article and thinking about what I could do in my own class I discovered that blogs could be use in any grade and would be useful for the not only the student but also the parents. I taught grade five and even then the problems with communication between the teacher and the parent was becoming minimal. Many of times the parents was unknown of the homework assignments and therefore was not able to help with studying, causing poor grades. After reading the article I thought about possible creating a blog that would open the lines of communication between the teacher and parent, while still allowing the child to learn responsibility. By creating a blog that all parents could access, showing homework, dates for exams, school events and programs i believe there would be excuse for the parent or the student to say they didn't not know. I also would use this blog to post students assignments as Kathy Cassisdy did. We are told that putting students works around the classroom in very motivating for the students well not post it on the web where the whole world could see. what kind of impact do you think this will have on students?
One of the coolest thing that I thought would be very beneficial for students would be to post comments on authors blogs and develop a corresponding blog between the students and the author. Many times when doing an author study the author may appear to be unreal, by creating a method to communicate with the students the author becomes real and the students are more able to relate to it. Another idea I would love to to use in my classroom is to set up blogging system between a school in another country and my classroom. Students some times forget about the world around them. By setting up a blog between another school and there's students can see how they live and compare it to how they live in Canada.
Therefore blogging is more than a journal on line it is a text book of information, a resource, a tool to help us communicate with each other. I look forward to seeing how my blog will process over the semester. See you for now and have a great weekend!
Lets go out and explore our World!!

My New Discover!

Wow! Did this week go fast! I'm just glad that it's the weekend tomorrow which means sleeping in a bit! YEAH!

So for everybody who do not know me I'm a very naive and gullible person. So when my brother said that he was able to speak to his girlfriend who lives in Ottawa, using MSN, I was pretty amazed! What I found out was through the use of wed cams you can communicate to the other person without typing and just talk to the person. I was later described that the web cams have a microphone in them and that it will pick up what you say and then transferred to person you are talking to and heard through the speakers on their computer. I know this is probably not new technology and everyone is laughing at my new discovering but i found it very interesting. Imagine you could just use MSN to communicate to your friends and not have a phone. I think that would be very cool. But then they would be able to see you and some days I don't look all that good!

Check This Out!

Check out this movie if you like it comment on it!
HIP HOP QUEEN
My friend is in it!!! I thought it was super funny!

My thoughts for Friday January 12th 2007

Hello!
Well it's 7:00 on a Friday night and yes I am doing homework! Wow has things changed from first year at university! Well I thought I would do my second entry for my blog web. Here we go!HE HE
I enjoyed last class very much. I was really inspired by the HUG compaign that Juan man( I think that is how you spell it, all I know it means "One Man") had done. If you have not seen it's about a man who wears a sign asking for "free hugs". At the beginning no one will hug him and anyone gives him a strange look. Eventually, people start to hug, it seems all happy but then the police get involved and puts a stop to the "hug compaign". They start a petition and get 1000 signatures. It's sad that our government gets so upset over people showing kindness and love to others. We have so much hate in this world. Our government is fine with sending soldiers to fight in the war, but get upset when one person decides to show compassion and love to others. If I was to see someone wearing the "free hug" sign I would definitely give that person a hug! When we lose love we have nothing!
If you would like to see this compaign it's on you tube or you can click on the the link to get there. It's a must to see!
"FREE HUGS"

Back to less political talk. I checked out Tristan's blog and she posted a great interactive site on the Natural History Museum. I played around with it and I really like the how easy it is and how useful it is too. There is lots of information, especially if your doing an unit of dinosaurs! There is games that children can play and also a spot where you can see what is all at the museum, since it's in London! If you want to take a look, click on the link! ENJOY!
MUSEUM SITE FOR KIDS

Bye for now!
Heather Willer

January 10th 2007

It's 11:13 in the morning and I'm sitting in on my Education computers class. Today we got to see how garage band works! It's super cool. I cannot believe that I'm doing actually blogging. It's super cool. Also today I drop my E reading class and I'm so excited that I was able to figure on getting another class to work. Well if you want to see a really cool sute go on you tube and search for for Lasses Gjertsen. it's neat! Well see you later!