I read a recent article on a drastic safety measure taken by a Rhode Island school. The school decided on having a "silent lunch" after three students choked during the noon hour. Now, thinking back to my internship and being a lunchroom supervisor I can see the reasoning behind this and understand that it probably cut down on the schools choking problem. This being said, I do feel that the noon hour should provide students with unstructured social time, which is a much needed part of any students academic life and that having a "silent lunch" may not be the wisest strategy to dealing with the problem. My questions to the strategy were 1. how will this be enforced? and 2. how will this affect classroom management after the noon hour? The article said that the school did not expect total silence, just enough to be safe, and that they would issue lunch detentions as a consequence. Unfortunately, I have no answers to my questions, but rest assured I will put this safety strategy right up there with "remove the slide but let them tobbaggan towards the street" strategy.
Here is a link to the article
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
In Need of Creative Input!
As I have probably mentioned before I created a blog for my grade 2 students during internship. This blog was a great success; parents, fellow educators, and the students fell in love with the idea of being connected to the global community. During internship I would post photos for parents and discuss the happenings each day. I would also post art, movies, websites and other student work. The students would also take time during the week to add their own content on their own page.
Now, I am no longer in internship, I no longer take pictures of the students to post or no what they are doing day to day. I do post a picture for the Star of the Week every week but I feel that it lacks variety. I know the kids are learning about animals within the province and adding strategies. What could I be doing on the blog to engage students to use it for more than it is currently being used for?
Room 210
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Mail Merge Murder!
It is getting down to crunch time for applying for teaching jobs so I thought I would get on the band wagon and get all of my application packages done early. Ahhh. After learning about mail merge in class a couple of my friends decided that they would use it for saving time on their coverletters. This successfully worked for them, so they sent me their data base, seeing as we are applying for the same jobs. Well, could I open the darn thing, no. So here is what I did:
1. Check to see why I couldn't open it. It was an mbd file and I don't have a program for that.
2. Tried to download Open Office. It was too complicated for my Mac.
3. Go to my mom's house because she had Open Office.
4. Realize that the database will never open and create a new one.
5. Finish typing in all of the fields and then realizing that the program doesn't actually work.
6. Copy and past my coverletter 8 times.
7. Erase all the field and type in the information, again.
Now, I know that this thing should have worked, but it seems like Murphy's Law occured when something so simple became so painstakingly difficult. Maybe I just didn't understand one simple thing that I was doing wrong, or maybe the program had a but, or maybe I just have bad luck. Either way, here are some questions for you.
How do we get our students to continue with technology when the easy things fail for them? Or, how do we convince our older colleagues to use technology when they could have rotten experiences such as this?
I would love to hear what you think!
1. Check to see why I couldn't open it. It was an mbd file and I don't have a program for that.
2. Tried to download Open Office. It was too complicated for my Mac.
3. Go to my mom's house because she had Open Office.
4. Realize that the database will never open and create a new one.
5. Finish typing in all of the fields and then realizing that the program doesn't actually work.
6. Copy and past my coverletter 8 times.
7. Erase all the field and type in the information, again.
Now, I know that this thing should have worked, but it seems like Murphy's Law occured when something so simple became so painstakingly difficult. Maybe I just didn't understand one simple thing that I was doing wrong, or maybe the program had a but, or maybe I just have bad luck. Either way, here are some questions for you.
How do we get our students to continue with technology when the easy things fail for them? Or, how do we convince our older colleagues to use technology when they could have rotten experiences such as this?
I would love to hear what you think!
Thursday, January 18, 2007
What is World of Warcraft?
I don't know how many of you know this but on Tuesday night World of Warcraft released their expansion pack called the Burning Crusade. I went to the release party for this game and was, well, horrified. I myself do not play World of Warcraft but my husband and his friends are avid players. On this particular night he wanted company to get his expansion pack at midnight from the Cornwall center. I obliged and went with him to the line of many university aged men (some women) waiting impatiently for their copy of the game. I felt very out of place at this "convention" of "gamers." I'm sure they could all tell by the look on my face that I was a skeptic and did not believe in their gaming ways.
Now, for many of you World of Warcraft (WOW) might be a mystery, but I advise you to make yourselves aware of it as it will most likely affect you as a person or you as a teacher at some point in you life. WOW is a "massive multiple online role playing game" or "mmo rpg" or as I like to call it a "video game played online with lots of people." WOW allows for the creation of individualized characters that interact with each other and also for players to interact with other players. This type of social networking is not unlike MSN or Yahoo! Chat but to me it seems far more addictive.
The addictive part to WOW is that players make friendships within the game and can verbally talk to others anywhere in the world. Players can also become completely different from who they really are; you can go from a nobody to a very powerful somebody in a matter of days. WOW is a world of its own with multiple continents, cities, races. Players can develop strategies to improve their characters, prior to this week characters were allowed to achieve a level of 60 and now can achieve level 70. One of the scary features of WOW is that it has no end, a player must finish their quests or battles before signing off (this applies to all members who do not want to be blacklisted for lack of participation and teamwork). Also the world within the game is forever changing and being updated so that players never get bored.
Although I am biased against WOW there are pros to playing the game as well:
Pros of WOW:
Social networking and peer acceptance
Learn strategies
Teamwork
Entertaining
Always changing
Able to become someone different with super human abilities
Unfortunately where there are pros, there must be cons:
Cons of WOW:
Obliged to complete what is started (massive time commitment)
Expensive
Addictive because of social networking/entertainment and peer acceptance
One will not have time for friends or family not involved in WOW
Poor customer service
Often freezes or crashes
How does WOW involve me?
WOW is, as I have said, addictive and many people are involved with it. I feel that it is just a matter of time before this mmo trickles down into the hands of middle years and secondary students. My worry is that these students will get caught up in the perks of the game and forget about extra-curricular activities, friends, homework, and sleep. I have seen all of these things happen to multiple people who play this game at the university level including my husband.
My point to this article is that we as educators really need to do is teach our students to think critically about the pros and cons of the activities that they chose to participate in. World of Warcraft, for example, is entertaining and social but it does need to be the only thing that students participate in. The same goes for MSN, MySpace, and any other social spaces.
Here is a clip of the new expansion to WOW:
I don't know how many of you know this but on Tuesday night World of Warcraft released their expansion pack called the Burning Crusade. I went to the release party for this game and was, well, horrified. I myself do not play World of Warcraft but my husband and his friends are avid players. On this particular night he wanted company to get his expansion pack at midnight from the Cornwall center. I obliged and went with him to the line of many university aged men (some women) waiting impatiently for their copy of the game. I felt very out of place at this "convention" of "gamers." I'm sure they could all tell by the look on my face that I was a skeptic and did not believe in their gaming ways.
Now, for many of you World of Warcraft (WOW) might be a mystery, but I advise you to make yourselves aware of it as it will most likely affect you as a person or you as a teacher at some point in you life. WOW is a "massive multiple online role playing game" or "mmo rpg" or as I like to call it a "video game played online with lots of people." WOW allows for the creation of individualized characters that interact with each other and also for players to interact with other players. This type of social networking is not unlike MSN or Yahoo! Chat but to me it seems far more addictive.
The addictive part to WOW is that players make friendships within the game and can verbally talk to others anywhere in the world. Players can also become completely different from who they really are; you can go from a nobody to a very powerful somebody in a matter of days. WOW is a world of its own with multiple continents, cities, races. Players can develop strategies to improve their characters, prior to this week characters were allowed to achieve a level of 60 and now can achieve level 70. One of the scary features of WOW is that it has no end, a player must finish their quests or battles before signing off (this applies to all members who do not want to be blacklisted for lack of participation and teamwork). Also the world within the game is forever changing and being updated so that players never get bored.
Although I am biased against WOW there are pros to playing the game as well:
Pros of WOW:
Social networking and peer acceptance
Learn strategies
Teamwork
Entertaining
Always changing
Able to become someone different with super human abilities
Unfortunately where there are pros, there must be cons:
Cons of WOW:
Obliged to complete what is started (massive time commitment)
Expensive
Addictive because of social networking/entertainment and peer acceptance
One will not have time for friends or family not involved in WOW
Poor customer service
Often freezes or crashes
How does WOW involve me?
WOW is, as I have said, addictive and many people are involved with it. I feel that it is just a matter of time before this mmo trickles down into the hands of middle years and secondary students. My worry is that these students will get caught up in the perks of the game and forget about extra-curricular activities, friends, homework, and sleep. I have seen all of these things happen to multiple people who play this game at the university level including my husband.
My point to this article is that we as educators really need to do is teach our students to think critically about the pros and cons of the activities that they chose to participate in. World of Warcraft, for example, is entertaining and social but it does need to be the only thing that students participate in. The same goes for MSN, MySpace, and any other social spaces.
Here is a clip of the new expansion to WOW:
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Blogs and such...
I created a blog for my students during internship with a blogmeister account. The students were so motivated to write on the site because they new that people from all around the world were looking at it. Because of privacy issues surrounding young children I did not include rss on the blog. I was worried about privacy and safety because I would not know who was subscribing to the blog. What do you think? Should I include rss?
ECMP 355
Since I began this class on Tuesday the entire world of technology has seemed to change. I am feeling a little overwhelmed. I have just bought my first cellular phone and now there is an iphone, I was going to subscribe to cable again but now there is appletv. I just can't seem to keep up! Hmmm, I guess I will wait a little while before buying a new apple computer.
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