I have finally found a routine that works for my schedule this semester.  I have specific times of the day set aside for certain tasks that need to be completed.  This is the best way I know how to keep myself organized.  For example, I have chosen to blog every night after class/before bed.  I tried a couple of different times of day and found that this one worked best for me in terms of consistency.  I also had the opportunity tonight to listen to the ECMP 355 live session from this week which happened to tie in nicely to what I was thinking about for my post.  I love when that happens.  I feel like there should be fireworks or something.  Anyway, I paused the session to type this post so I wouldn't forget.  You never know when ideas will strike, so I am always prepared with a pen and paper to jot them down, or in this case, a blog and a keyboard.

This week we were asked to follow the #comments4kids hashtag on twitter and find a few classes to follow and comment on.  I went on twitter this afternoon and found a three that I wanted to post comments on.  The first was a news podcast created by 3rd graders in Oklahoma.  My comment hasn't been approved yet, but I tried to give the children specific feedback about what I liked so they knew I had actually taken the time to listen.  The second blog I found was a blog dedicated to book reviews written by the students.  I found a book I had actually read and posted a comment to that student, which you can read here.  I think peer book reviews are an excellent strategy for promoting literacy in the classroom and teaming them up with blogging is magic!  Lastly I visited another 3rd grade blog and commented on a couple of posts that I really enjoyed reading.  One of the posts has since disappeared, but the other one can be found here, along with my comment.

During the live session this week, Dean mentioned the power behind a comment from a stranger who had happened on your blog, and cared enough about what you were writing to leave some feedback.  This is so true!  I have had a couple of strangers comment on my posts and I was so excited that I immediately told my partner about them.  It made my work feel important and made me want to write more.  I guess in a way I payed that forward this afternoon and I hope my comments inspired some youngsters to keep blogging.  

My ECMP 355 class is an online course so instead of meeting in a classroom, we have a class blog that our professor uses to house our assignments and other vital information as it comes up.  The other day Dean posted a how-to video for subscribing to blogs.  When I initially saw the post I *gasp* cruised past it because I thought I already knew how.  I mean on most blogs the button is right there inviting you to subscribe, and so I deduced that the video must have been made for peeps with less technical savvy than myself.  When I clicked on that oh-so-obvious subscribe button on our class blog, the screen changed to show the same blog posts as the home page but with less pizazz.  So I decided that maybe subscribing wasn't for me and instead devised a schedule for checking my classmates' blogs manually on a rotating basis.  My plan was flawed in that there are 30 students in the class, and I found that I was checking three or four blogs before I would find one that had a new post or a post I felt compelled to comment on.  This was no good.  I needed a new plan.

So I went back to drawing board/the home page of our class blog and revisited Dean's how-to video.  And this time I watched it.  As it turns out, this guy really knows what he is talking about!  He had us subscribe to the blogs using Google Reader.  I can't even describe the awesomeness that is Google Reader; you will simply have to experience it for yourself.  You need a Google account and I had just created a fresh one to post my YouTube video below*.  So now all my blogs are neatly arranged in alphabetical order by last name (you say anal-retentive, I say organized) in an ECMP 355 folder. I scrolled through and read all the new posts of my classmates and made comments on a few that caught my eye.

Lesson learned - you win this round Mr. Shareski.  I will never again dismiss your blog posts as invaluable and instead will treasure them as potential nuggets of pure gold.

*When did Google and YouTube become an item?

Whenever I tell people I am in the primary education program, I am often met with a response that includes some form of "it takes a special kind of person to work with youngsters" or "you must be crazy".  Sure kids come with their downfalls like their mysterious affliction of jam hands - a medical condition striking children that causes their hands to attract sticky substances which is then deposited on just about everything - but they also come with a fresh perspective and a whole lot of laughs. Today at work we had the kids select and assemble a foam friend.  You are probably asking yourself, "What is a foam friend and how do I get one?"  Basically you get a set of foam pieces in a bag accompanied by a set of instructions, and with a little glue, some patience and the magic words, abracadabra, you end up with either a foam lizard, turtle, frog, or snake to call your own.  The program I work for offers after school programming with extra support in the areas of social skill building, and literacy/numeracy development.  Activities like this work because the kids have to read and follow the directions, they provide a goal or end product to work towards, and they allow them to be successful.  Today this exchange happened between E (age 8) and J (age 5):

E: (gluing the spots on her foam frog friend)

J: "Hey!  Why your frog has huge pimples on its back?"

That simple question sums up why I choose to work with littles.  It is because their imaginations can take things in a direction our adult minds could have never dreamed of.  I love my job!  

The mystery of what Miss W looks like has finally been revealed.  I particularly love the awkward face YouTube selected as the cover for my video.  Really captured the essence of what I was going for.  Oh and by the way, this took me days to record.  I just couldn't get my hair/lighting/outfit/voice just right.  A true labour of love.  Enjoy!

I spend a fair bit of my day on my computer or iPad; sometimes doing homework but mostly googling recipes or browsing Used Regina ads (it's like an online garage sale you can browse from your home, and who doesn't love garage sales? No? Just me?). Both my computer and iPad automatically log me into Skype whenever they are signed on.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Skype, it is literally the best thing since the telephone.  It is free to use and allows you to call up your loved ones to have a face-to-face conversation through your respective  computers. I actually remember thinking about the invention of a phone that would allow people to see who they were talking to when I was 7 or 8.  It really creeped me out because for some reason I thought it would only be one sided and it would be without my knowledge.  Skype isn't like that. It has allowed me to watch my nephew and (much) younger sister and brother grow up, even though we don't live in the same province. In fact, my 5-year-old sister knows how to operate Skype on multiple devices and has been known to Skype me several times a week, pending my green check mark showing (a Skype feature that lets you know who is online). This reminds me how different my childhood was 20+ years ago from children today. Another example is going to the movie store to rent a video.  I used to love going with my parents, my friends, my boyfriend to pick out a movie and grab some snacks for an evening of cinema in the living room.  With the exception of small convenience stores and specialty shops, we are currently witnessing the death of physical movie rentals. It is actually on life support in Regina.  Big stores like Blockbuster and Rogers just couldn't compete with the likes of Netflix and on-demand services offered by cable companies and both have since closed all their mortar and brick locations and made the move to offer online rentals. My prediction is that music stores like hmv are next.  Technology is changing the way we offer a lot of services, including education.  I don't know how many times I have wondered how teachers lesson planned before the Internet. It's funny to think that one day children will wonder how we managed to live life with the little conveniences we have right now.

At work we have been decorating little flower pots for Mother's Day this weekend.  The kids have been busy painting and creating little bouquets of fake flowers to go inside.  Last semester we had a discussion in our EHE 310 - Health Education in Elementary Schools - course about whether or not certain holidays should be acknowledged or celebrated, particularly in public schools.  Mother's Day was one of those holidays that came up, and the discussion got very heated as my classmates shared their differing points of view.  I personally believe that we should be showing the important people in our lives that we love them everyday and that we don't need big businesses to sell us cards and stuffed animals on a designated day of the year to let our mothers, fathers, spouses, etc. know that we were thinking about them the other 364 days too.  From my perspective they should not be celebrated in schools if the celebration is solely to make cards and other crafts for moms and dads on their respective days because I don't believe we should be utilizing the little time we have making things that are "cute" just for the sake of making them.  I think there are plenty of alternative ways to acknowledge the day that also incorporate some type of learning and don't have children cutting out hearts and making flowers out of egg cartons.  I guess where I am coming from is the perspective of the children who don't have a mother or a father, the ones that might have two, or the children being raised by grandparents or a combination of many relatives.  The family dynamic has evolved over time and what was considered "normal" 40 years ago is quite different today.  So maybe instead of celebrating Mother's Day the same way we did when we were children, we should consider the families that are currently in our schools and decide if that still makes sense for them today.  Thoughts?

Welcome to my humble abode! I am not new to the world of blogging.  You might remember me from such blogs as "Reduce Reuse Recycle: You Are What You Eat" and "Mes Aventures au Québec", both of which are sooo last year in that no one has posted on them since 2011.  This blog is going to be different, I can just feel it.  I am still in the process of sprucing up the place, so don't get too attached to the decor.  I have never used Weebly before so I am learning how to move things around and make changes. One of the features you may have noticed is my twitter feed on the right.  You may have also noticed that my last tweet was almost 100 days ago.  I will be honest and say that I only signed up for my account a few months ago at the suggestion of one of my profs and, up until recently, I didn't get how to tweet #WhatIsThisNumberSignAboutAnyway. This was particularly embarrassing when I discovered that my dad had been tweeting for nearly two years before I joined. So I posted the feed on my blog for two reasons: 1) so I remember that I have a twitter account and 2) so I can make a conscious effort to tweet more often.  And who knows?  Maybe my tweets will be so awesome that Josh Groban will want to turn them into songs too.