Thanksgiving!

It's finally Thanksgiving break and this means time for good food, visiting with friends, family and catching back up on sleep! I know that I really needed this break to get away from waking up early for classes and hopefully get healthy so when I head back Sunday, I should be good as new to get through the next 2 weeks! 
I plan on using this break however to get started on the projects and papers we will have to continue working on when we get back. I will, of course be spending time with the family and baby cousins, but when it is time for down time, I plan on hiding for a few minutes and working on projects. It is crazy to think that this semester is almost over! Time is flying by and I am not ready to think about being out in the real world quite yet! :p
I hope you all have an amazing break, get lots of rest, visit with family and friends and of course eat LOTS! See you all Monday :)

Student’s careless Facebook post nearly leads to expulsion-eSchool

What we should NOT be doing on facebook these days! This article was really an eye opener and all of us should learn from this mistake this young senior made. Facebook has become very popular, so popular that now when going into interviews for future professions, the people that are going to consider highering you take a look into your profile page. For some jobs, this will  allow you to receive an interview or you are no longer someone they are interested in. As future teachers, we need to make sure to get rid of those pictures, not write awful comments about people, inform facebook where you are at all times, because it can cause serious damage into your future.


I have friends on facebook that constant write nasty comments or inform the world where they are and even that gets into a hold new level like creating stalkers. I know that facebook is something I use when I am bored or to keep up to date with friends from high school, but the key is to make sure not to use it for critizing people, things, informing people where you are, or and other nosense like that. It could make you look bad even before going into an interview for a job. Now a days, this is the first perception of the interviewers of you. Take not of this lesson future teachers! 

How to teach young children in the digital age-eSchool

I always knew going into this profession that I was going to get paid tons of money. Most people that go into this profession do it for the love of working with children and want to give them a good education. I know that these were my reasons for choosing this profession. I believe that the reasons for our GPA standards are set much higher than others because we have the responsibility of teaching other people. If don't know the content or information, we can't teach the students to be sucessful. I do agree that if our standards were to be set lower, then students would not try and as hard we do now. I know that I am always trying to do my best to make sure that my grades don't slip and having to maintain a 2.8 GPA to stay in the education program here at Cortland, it strives me to want to do well in all of my classes.

However, what is upsetting to be about this article is that fact that education majors work so hard to get to where they need to go and others jobs who don't require much education background at all can walk into a classroom and substitute teach or actually teach a class. That is saying that anyone can teach, which if that is the case, why do we need to work so hard and go to school for five years? I don't like all of this controversy over getting paid less than other professions, but I do know that teachers know ahead of time walking into the profession, the pay is not high, but we do it for the love of children. I wish our profession was taken much more seriously than it is portrayed today!

iMovie

Recently we learned in EDU315 how to use and understand the iMovie program on the iMAC computers. This is another great strategy to incorporate into my classroom in the future! 


It is a great way to get the students to learn how to collaborate together, and apply the methods in the subjects they have been learning about, and then understanding how to do them. I know that our group made our lesson on math, with a simple multiplication problem, then applied the strategies we learned in Susana's class into how to show students to solve the problem. 


The best way I realized for the students to learn about this program is by letting them explore! Our class was taught to explore first for a few minutes then we would all discuss what we found and different tools it had. I would make sure to let the students explore and then teach them the different techniques this programs has and basic tools they would use.


I will be using this in my classroom, depending on what grade level I end up teaching in. Even if they are young, I would still use this program in the classroom and make my own videos for the students. It's engaging for them and its different then using direct instruction.