FINAL REFLECTION

At the close of the semester, I just took my final assessment of the class. I thought back on the answers of the pre-assessment which I took at the beginning of the year. Almost every single one of those early answers were "not confident" or "very very not confident." I started the course with the attitude of basically avoiding technology for the most part in my classroom because I didn't even know where to start with it. However, many of my answers on the post-assessment were "fairly confident" or higher. I may not be an expert on technologies, but I know enough about different aspects that I can think of ideas to apply them to my classroom and go search and learn about them specifically.


Learning how to do movies is one thing I would like to implement in my own classroom. It'll help me make more effective videos, but I also think I could utilize it as an assignment for my students. For example, maybe I'll have my students make videos on the laundry unit. I can use the knowledge I have about iMovie and help my students use it to understand the concepts we learn in class. For other design or interiors lessons I'll also be able to use technology to enhance the lesson that way. I will definitely create a class website. I think that is a great way to connect with parents and students and it's a method I can control myself.

Internet Safety

After I learned a little bit about internet safety, I decided to "teach" my husband about it. However, my husband works as a computer tech at an elementary school and therefore has learned through classes and experience about internet safety. So it ended up being more of an internet safety discussion, which was good. I didn't realize that my information was so easily accessible to anyone else. We googled each of our names and to our surprise, the first five hits on my name were direct links to actual information about me. We found that our blog is much easier to find than we thought. Honestly, I thought my blog was really only easy to find if someone followed the trail of blog lists of family and friends- not so. If you type my name into google it pulls up the most recent blog posts I've put up as well as the recent posts of friends and family. I realized from this that I need to be more careful about what I post on my blog. Before now, I've posted anything and everything we do, and the things I post would give a stranger a really good idea of our lives. Another thing we found on the google search was my name on another person's facebook list. This person is really not a respectable person, but just because I'm on her friend list, I came up. I deleted my facebook page after this. It wasn't a big deal or a rash move; it's just a page on the internet that gives more information about me than I want people to know, and it links me to people I don't want to be associated with. In the end, my husband and I decided many people just don't realize how accessible they really are, and we all would do well to use a little more caution in what information we put out.

Research Fair

I went to the research fair on Tuesday. I walked in feeling really out of place- I didn't know what I was supposed to do, did people really want to waste their time telling me about the research they're doing? It's not like I can do anything for them but listen anyway. So I tried to stay invisible and just observe for most of it. However, I found one display that really interested me. It was about using picture books to increase the comprehension of children with Asperger's Syndrome. That caught my eye because this term in English I wrote a technical report about Asperger's and various teaching methods. Since I knew a little bit about it, I decided to go talk with the presenter. Her theory was very interesting. Since children with AS can't usually read social cues, facial expressions, or body language, they fall behind in communication skills. However, since picture books have exaggerated features and still images,children are better able to clue into the expression and understand what it means. The fair was better than I expected, that's my review.

Conservation Video

Ideas for my VIDEO

In a few of my classes I've watched a video of the same experiment. The concept for this experiment is Piaget's theory of conservation. This is commonly demonstrated by two beakers of water, same size and shape, and same amount of water. An adult asks a child (around age 4) which one has more water. They answer, "they have the same." Then the adult pours one beaker of water into another beaker, taller and skinnier. When asked which has more, the child thinks the taller beaker has more water. Thus showing their inability to conserve. There's a few more mini experiments that show this too. All the videos I've seen are pretty outdated so I thought it would be nice to remake the video and modernize it. I'm going to use my little sister to videotape the experiment. I'll do the beaker experiment and one more involving pennies. Then I'll use iMovie to edit the content and make it professional- hopefully.

Videos in the Classroom

My subject is Family and Consumer Science and when I think of the videos I watched in my home ec classes all I can remember are boring instructional videos thirty years old. I think I could utilize videos better in my own classroom. For example, I could show clips of how fashion and home economics is relatable to my students. To give my old teachers credit, instructional videos would be very helpful to show a cooking class or a sewing class. But instead of using the old cooking shows, I could show something more modern that would interest my students more.

I think videos are fun and helpful in the classroom but you have to use them right- and put them with the right assignment to make it beneficial.

Of Course it Can't Be Easy

When I started working on my project I began to explore Photoshop to try and create shapes, rearrange, change colors, etc. However, the layers just got in the way. I couldn't create a basic floorplan (that students wouldn't alter) and then add shapes which could be manipulated for the assignment. (NOTE: I recognize that there is probably a way around this but I feel like that would be more complicated than the lesson is worth.) My dad suggested that I try the Pages program on Mac. He said it's a little more simple and you can manipulate objects fairly easy. Since I'm such a beginner with technology I think it's probably best to start learning with the basics of Pages and then progress to Photoshop. Problem avoided.

However, I've been working in Pages and have run into a few glitches. One of these is that I'm trying to draw a door symbol on my floorplan and it's not working out. This is a symbol used in design so it's not one of the basic shapes to choose from. It's essentially a triangle with one rounded edge and I can't seem to figure out how to get it looking right. I'm trying a few different things I've found and have gotten it a little closer but it still looks a little homemade.