"Hope" for the future...

I was messing around with my blogfolio tonight and wanted to add some character to it. Well, what I found LITERALLY added a character to my homepage!! She is an avatar that resembles myself that I created on my own at www.meez.com .If you sign up for a free account and design your avatar, it'll make you pay for clothes in "coinz" that you are given for free. It then has the option to share it on your blog and gives the embedding code and VOILA!! I thought this was a creative way to post a visual of myself as well as a safer way. Using an avatar to show myself seems more safe than posting a real profile picture. This could be a fun way for children to express themselves and put a face to their own blogs and such too! Some parents may not find it appropriate to post pictures and personal information (which in a lot of cases it's not) on the internet and therefore this could be an option!   

Yesterday while watching t.v, I came across a documentary on HBO called "Prom Night in Mississippi".It was related to a specific school in Charleston Mississippi.Its main focus was on an interracial prom that was going to take place within the school. The show discusses with students, parents and teachers their personal feelings towards this integrative event and how they think it will turn out. What surprised me the most was first of all how unaware I was that this type of segregation still exists in larger context like an entire high school setting. What also baffled me was that majority of the students had put aside their differences and it was the PARENTS that weren't allowing the natural integration of the students. All of the students attended classes together, but yet their events were treated as "black" and "white". This program intrigued me and I wonder if many other people realize the separation and racism that still exists in schools. Not to say that I do not think racism exists among students everywhere, but for the entire school to condone separate events based on color seems absolutely absurd to me! A bunch of the "white" parents and students decided that they were going to fundraise money to have their own prom and that they would not take part or they would not let their children take part in the integrated prom.

Here is a audio related to it that i found online! Check it out! 

WoW! This is the first time i have ever witnessed the capabilities of a "Smartboard"(also known as interactive white boards). A former student Ellyse Haase was the presenter. She has experience with these smartboards because of her internship which incorporated it into the classroom. It was fascinating to see the possibilities and interactive ways you can technically involve the students into lesson plans. For example, when we went through a lesson plan of Ellyse's we were being the students and having the opportunity to fill the blanks and answer the questions at the front of the class using our fingers as the "pen". I hope that I learn how to use this interactive innovation very soon and can easily incorporate it into my lesson plans as I go through the 3 years i have left of education.

How fitting! In my social studies class for my final project i need to chart some statistics. Although i already was well aware of the capabilities of Excel, it was beneficial to have gone over the basics of the program in our ECMP355 class!!! It made my life a lot easier in setting up my project and will definitely save me time in the long run. I just love the amount of programs Alec is showing us because they are all so easily accessible and easy for anyone to use! I'm most definitely going to utilize these in the future and therefore need to keep a updated list of useful sites available via the internet. Thanks Alec!   

In class we went back a little and used a spreadsheet to input grades as well as for a money management tech task.. Here is the spreadsheet we had to create with given figures that we simply had to plot into the spreadsheet and make it our own.

In class today we got to fool around in groups/partners with GarageBand! its a program that allows you tc create your own tunes/songs by recording or usin given sounds. It was actually really fun and interesting to see how the three of us could collaborate and choose different instruments to create a piece that actually is pretty cool i think! CHECK IT OUT !!