Hello fellow bloggers, here is Lindsay’s and my final ECMP project. For our project we made a detective film and we interviewed people about what they thought art was and about arts place in education. I hope you like it, please feel free to leave comments and any feedback you may have!!! I noticed the first time I posted this I posted it as a page woops, well here it is now as a post, enjoy!!
I wanted to try doing another voice thread so I could practice using my mike. I think this voice thread sounds pretty good. I was looking at Nicole’s blog and that’s where I got an idea to share some of my favorite quotes and poems. I still cannot figure out how to embed my voice thread ,but here is the link if you want to check it out http://voicethread.com/#u61077.b107028.i547028 Enjoy!
Well fellow bloggers of ECMP 355 this is it, class is over it is the last day of classes. Now all we have to deal with is finishing up final projects and studying for exams. I had lot’s of fun blogging in this class. It was difficult to know what to talk about sometimes ,but I always found something or another to talk about. Any way now that I have about 43 blogs in total I don’t really want to stop. I would like to continue blogging through out the summer. I was thinking of doing a series called dirt bike diaries. These blogs will be more personal than educational in content, but I promise they will still be interesting. I probably won’t get the chance to blog as often, but we will see this is a test. I want to build up a network like Dean so that I have lot’s of online help and support when I become a teacher. I also want to create my own online portfolio so that I have something unique to show in future job interviews. Any way I just wanted to thank all of my readers and people who have made comments. They have been very useful and I hope you stay tuned! Bye for now 
For my blogging mentor-ship project I chose to comment on Maria Knee’s kinder kids classroom blog. I was interested in working with this class because I am interested in eventually teaching kindergarten. I tried my best to comment once or twice a week. When I commented I wrote on as many student blogs as I could. I tried to comment more on the students blogs who had received fewer comments. I think it is important that students know that people are reading their work and care about what they are writing and what they are doing. In my comments I tried to ask questions, to simulate conversation with the students. For example on Maddie’s blog I asked her “What did you do for your holidays?” and she responded “my dads famle cam ori 1 nit”. I then responded “Hi Maddie, thank you for answering my question! You are doing a good job on your sentences. Here is how you can fix you sentence. My dads family came over one night. I hope this helps, keep up the good work with your writing!”. I think it is very important to encourage young students with their writing so that they are excited and constantly encouraged to keep improving their writing. Another example of a comment I left on Briana’s blog was “Hi Brianna, I like your poem about the Macaroni Penguin. Do you know what other kinds of animals live in Antarctica?”. I wanted to see if she would reply and tell me more about what she learned about the macaroni penguin. Or I wanted her to think about what she learned about the Macaroni penguin, and perhaps ask the teacher more questions about penguins. I also made comments on the teachers blog directed to her whole class. I think one of my most successful comments on the teachers blog was when I did an audio reply on her voice thread entitled “Who Do You Love”.
Another example of a comment I made on the teachers Ooblek blog is “Wow that looks Ooblek looks like lot’s of fun to play with! What happened when you picked it up? Did the Ooblek melt in you hands? Then did it get all hard when you stopped playing with it?” I thought these were some good questions to ask. I know that Ooblek is cornstarch and water and I wanted to see if they knew the difference between a liquid and a solid.
One day I got an email from Maria and she asked me about growing up in the north and what kind of animals live up there, etc. I responded in an email. I wish I would have made a wiki about growing up in the North then somehow shared this with her classroom. I tried to talk to Maria’s class on the Yak Pack feature she has on her site, but I must have hit the wrong time. I was just curious to see if it would work. If I could do this mentor-ship again I think I would have liked to have a Skype conversation with Maria’s class like Brittany did. I think it would be really neat for the kids to see me and for me to see them. Then they would have a better idea of who I am and what I sound like. Any way these are all things I would like to experiment with in the future. I learned about a lot of different programs just scrolling around Maria’s website like bubble share, one true media, voice thread, etc. I think it is really neat how Maria combines technology with her Kindergarten class. Before I started mentoring I wrote a blog about how I didn’t think technology like blogging could work in a Kindergarten class. Maria Knee’s blog has proved me wrong. There are so many interesting possibilities for online learning with younger students. Her kinder kids even have online buddies, and I think that is really neat! Over all this has been a very good learning experience for me and I will make sure to keep checking out the updates on Maria’s blog! I would also like to say thank you very much to Maria Knee for allowing me to participate in your online classes! It was a fabulous learning experience!
Last summer I worked at a camp for people with intellectual and physical disabilities. The first cabin I got was a group of 12 women. Any way I will only talk about one of the women who really got to me. She was in about her 50’s or 60’s and she used to be a teacher. She had short term memory loss. So I could have a conversation with her for about one or two minutes, then she would ask me who I was and where she was. It was really sad. One thing that she could remember though was her music. She always wanted to play the piano and she could play every note perfectly. I would always sing along with her, and she just loved it. This women also spoke french so I spoke to her in french once in a while and she liked it. You could really tell that she was a great teacher and that she was very smart. I just think it is really sad how someone who is such an amazing person could lose their memory. I remember having the same conversation with her 30 or more times in one day about what we were going to do and where we were going. At first it frustrated me, but after a while I realized that there was nothing that could be done about it. I was very patient with her, she was such a wonderful woman. The sad thing about it is if I ever meet her again she will not know who I am, or remember the time we spent together, but I will always remember her. Below I have posted a video of a man who has a very short term memory. He can only remember things for about 30 seconds or less than it is gone. This will give you an idea of what it is like to have a conversation with someone who has a short term memory. Also if you want to read more about short term memory please go to http://www.memorylossonline.com/glossary/memory.html.
So I was reading Nicole Little’s blog and I came across a really cool program called adobe photo shop express. I decided that I wanted to experiment with this site for myself. It offers a lot of features like crop and rotate, auto correct, exposure, red-eye removal, touch up, saturation, white balance, highlight, sharpen, soft focus, pop color, hue, black and white, tint, and sketch. I have never really edited my photos before except for the basic crop and lighting feature. Any way below I have posted some of the my pictures that I made on my express account. They are pretty crazy ,but I like them. I think you could get your students to use this program to create really interesting looking photos then could write a short story about the person or object in the picture. Enjoy! ,and thank you Nicole for posting about adobe photo shop express to start with, it is a fantastic program!!
