Reflection-Internet Safety

This week has been insane, and stressful. That's life sometimes and you just have to roll with the punches.

This week we learned a lot about internet safety and how to evaluate a website. Since the internet is here to stay it is very important to make sure that we as teachers help the kids in our classes understand the dangers of the internet, and how to use it wisely. That's right. The internet is not going anywhere, and we need to use it in our teaching. Not only is it a wonderful tool for us as teachers, it can be a great enhancement to the classroom, and your students education. With kids as young as 3 learning how to use the computer now days, we have a responsibility to help our kids understand how to use it as a powerful tool, but how to be smart and safe while using it. Teach them not to open emails from people they don't know. Explain to them the dangers of giving out personal information online, and give them rules about when they can use the computer and where they can use it.

One important part of teaching our kids how to use the internet is teaching them how to evaluate the websites they use. They need to know that not every website contains accurate information. They should be able to ask themselves some key questions to find out if the website is a good website to use as a resource. Some examples of questions are:

* What are the resources this author/website uses to back up the material?
* When was the information on this website last updated?
* What kind of domain does it have? (.edu, .org, etc.)

By teaching them some internet basics they will have a better knowledge of how to safely use it for the rest of their lives.I have found some really great websites that help teach kids about internet safety through games and videos made specifically for them. If you want to check them out go to my uen site (link in post below) and click on Internet Education. They are listed under my bookmarks. :)

Proud to Introduce....

Baby Adams. He/She is 9 weeks old, and apparently likes to do the jig. When he/she first popped up on the screen he/she was dancing around. The doctor said it looked like the jog. lol. It was so fun to see the baby moving around, but even better to see the heartbeat. It's been an interesting pregnancy so far. Competely different than my last one. I don't get morning sickness...I get all day sickness. And sometimes I don't even have the energy to lift my arm. But I have to keep telling myself that it's good to be sick and tired. I'd rather deal with it then have it suddenly dissappear. It's been hard for me to not worry...but it's getting better with every week that goes by. I'll be honest, it took me a few weeks to get even a little attached, but now I am.

As most of you already know, we bought a baby crib. Ironically the smell of it makes me completely sick. I don't know why. So for weeks I haven't been able to go into the second bedroom. I bought a air freshener plug in and that has seemed to mask the smell of the wood enough I can go into the room without holding my breath. Anyway. We are thrilled, and even though we're not quite out of the woods as far as miscarraige goes, we feel really good about everything. OH and the doctor forgot to tell us the due date...but I'm guessing it's at the end of April, beginning of May.
(This next part not for the weak of stomach)
Oh on a side note, after my appointment today I went to AF hospital for lab tests and blood work. It was a super fun experience. Since high school they never seem to be able to find any working veins (it's a wonder i'm still alive). I warned the nurse of my vein problem and she did what all the other nurses do, she said "I'm sure it will be fine." I just looked at her and smiled...I knew what was coming. I've seen it a million times. So she spent 10 minutes looking for a vein, and finally decided on one in my right arm. She put the needle in, and started moving it around. She finally got it into my vein, but no blood was coming, and it kept slipping out...and then my arem started turning blue. My vein blew. So she wrapped my arm and apologized, and ran to get a smaller needle. So she starts feeling around my left arm for a second vein. The only one she can find is pretty deep, but she decides to go for it. So she sticks the needle in and moves it around a little, and the tiniest drop of blood came out. We both looked at the "gushing" blood, then at the 7 tubes I had to fill up. We knew at this rate we'd be here all day. After 10 minutes I hadn't even filled up an 8th of the tube when suddenly the blood stopped coming. Vein number 2 blew. The nurse was astonished and said she had used a pediatric needle so it should have been fine. I just sat there and told her that it happens to me alot. She wrapped that arm, and went to go get the nurse in charge. The nurse came and decided that she didn't want to try anymore veins from my arm, and after examining me for a couple minutes decided to try the vein on the back of my hand. If you've never had to have blood pulled from that vein let me tell you...not pleasant. Anyway so they start dumping all the blood into a big tube so that they could just divide it into the smaller tubes later. While they were draining my of my blood supply I suddenly felt really nauseas. The nurse looked at me and said "are you breathing?" I realized I hadn't been, so I told her I forgot because I was trying not to throw up. She told me to take deep breaths and got one of the other nurses to bring me some ice water (best water I've ever had by the way)and a lollipop. So while they finished I drank the water which helped, and watched as they wrapped my hand in that medical tape. They made me sit for a minute and eat the sucker and drink my water before they let me go, which I was grateful for. So there I am, two blown veins, both my arms and one of my hand covered in florecent orange pumpking medical tape eating a sucker. I suddenly felt like a little kid. lol. Luckily the room stopped spinning and I made it to work ok, and will only look like I've been beaten for a week or so. lol. The joys of being pregnant. Wouldn't trade them for the world.

My UEN!

http://my.uen.org/myuen/212976 ~There it is, my website for my future class. So copy and paste this link if you want to check it out!

UEN Reflection:

I’m really excited about my uen site! I think it’s a great way to keep myself organized. I really like how there is a public site and there I have my own personal site. I’m excited about the calendar on the public site so that the kids and their parents can see what’s due that week, and activities and class events that are coming up.
I’m absolutely thrilled about the Pioneer Online Library. What an amazing resource to have as a teacher. Just by logging in to the Pioneer site, you have access to state curriculum, local and world news, journals and data bases, as well as some great search engines and lesson plans with neat information about kids. You can also find media that will work for you lessons. I am really hoping for the opportunity to teach in a Spanish immersion program, so I was really excited at the Spanish resources available through the Pioneer online library. Through UEN you can also find really neat interactives that you can have your kids play. Under the 5th grade core curriculum, which you can view through UEN, I found out that in 5th grade they focus alot on emotional and physical health. One unit teaches about good and bad nutrition and how excercise can play a big rold in overall health. I found a really neat game that helps teach these concepts in a fun way.
I was also really excited about some of the lesson plans offered. I searched for a 5th grade lesson plan about health and found one that teaches kids how to have a good self esteem. This lesson plan also included ideas for activities, and a worksheet the kids can do. What an amazing resource to have!
I had a lot of fun playing with the Culture Grams. I think you could divide the kids into groups, have them pick a country in the world and create a presentation with basic information about the country, fun facts, and pictures. It’s also got a great feature that teaches the kids how to pronounce certain words and phrases in the country’s language.
I also really like that I can post links on my bookmarks for the public page. From there I can post links that might be helpful to parents. By creating current curriculum resources you can create lesson plans, find worksheets to use, and activities to play with the kids. I created a curriculum for 5th grade language arts, and was able to find a worksheet called Eye Spy a Pattern which helps teach students how patterns and things work together. I also really liked the idea they had about creating candy boxes to help kids learn about volume and dimensions. My UEN is full of great tools and resources that will really help me to be creative and come up with fun ways to teach my students core curriculum.

It's Alive!

What's alive you ask? Well, my dream of creating a website! That's right. This week in my class I learned how to create a website. On Tuesday we used the free google sites to create a pretty basic website. It was a good starter tool. Anybody can do it and it really doesn't take long. I love the idea of having a class website, but there is another website creator that is even cooler. It's my.uen.com here you can create your own website, but it includes a lot of pretty cool tools. It's got a calendar which I love. You can add dates when things are due, post reading and other assignments, or even just post what you plan to cover for that week. I think it's a great way for parents who are wanting to be involved, and make sure their kids stay on top of things to see clearly what they need to help their kids with. When I was in school my mom was always having to call our teachers and make sure that we were caught up and not missing anything. I think it will help the parents save time and even better, it will help me save time. If I were a parent I would love to just jump online and see what my child was learning and what he needed to turn in that week.
Another thing that is cool about this website, is that it offers a public and a private site. So the public site is for the parents and the kids, but the private portion of the site has so many neat tools. It's got a tool to help with lesson planning, and tools that connect you to libraries and online resources for your lessons. Pretty much any online document, journal or resource from U of U, BYU, etc. is available on this website. They've got a special library section for kids and teachers. It's amazing!
We're going to spend more time during the semester learning more about the how to build our website. I'm really excited to continue learning about building a website. I think it's going to be a great tool to help me connect with the parents and kids. I'll post the links later so that you can see them if you'd like. :)

La Obra del Senor

Last night I had the opportunity to go out with the sister missionaries. Sister Gonzales is from Mexico, and the other sister is from Guatamala...I can't remember her name off the top of my head...It was such a neat experience. It was interesting sitting there remembering what it was like as the missionary to love the family so much and seeing them receive inspiration on what to say and how to teach certain concepts. You really could feel the spirit in the room so strongly and the authority they had to teach the gospel. We went to a young family in Provo. The mother is from Mexico, the father is from Guatemala. They have 5 young under the age of 5, and the mom's brother is living with them too.

I felt like I was on a mission again...almost. I felt a love for these people who were wanting to bring Heavenly Father more into their lives, and yet I had no anxiety of being the missionary. That was nice. :) Anyway, the sisters taught them about the Book of Mormon and Prayer. It was a great lesson, and I was able to bear my testimony a few times, and answer some of their questions. The mom was ready to get baptized, but she wasn't married to the dad, so they're trying to bring him up to speed so that they can get married and baptized together. Which usually seemed to be what I ran into on my mission, the mom was ready and you just had to bring the dad along so they could take that step together. So at the end of the night the dad said the prayer! Which I didn't know that it was such a big deal. As soon as we left, and the front door was closed, the sisters started jumping up and down and were saying what a good lesson it was and how they couldn't believe that he prayed.

I watched them just fall in love with this little family all over again and experience the true joy that comes from seeing people you love accept or progress in the gospel. On my mission I experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows I have ever known. I was so glad that I could be apart of one of those highs with the sisters last night.

I am so thankful that I served a mission, and I'm even more thankful that they asked me to go with them. If you ever have the chance to go out with the missionaries, do it! It is such a neat experience, and you'll be glad you did. I came home last night singing hymns and Primary songs, and I even dreamed about everybody I had loved on my mission. Now I'm mostly just rambling. I wish I had the words to express how much I needed that spiritual boost. I'm so grateful I went. I love the gospel!

Excited about Excel!

I'm thinking that my reflections writings on the side won't be enough to provide my teacher the information she wants, so I've decided to just make it a post.

This week in class we spent one day on Microsoft Word, and the other on Excel. For the most part I'm pretty familiar with Word, but I was surprized to learn a couple new things. For example, in word you can add "Word Art". So what you do is you can type a word or a phrase and then click on word art and pick how you want this word or phrase to appear on your document. You can change the shape the words take too. I figured this is something really nice to finally know how to do because if you are creating a handout for the kids, or something to take home to the parents it will help it catch their eye. Up until this point I would always just create my own word art, or find something online that maybe said the phrase and then paste it to the document. So I'm excited about that. Oh I also learned how to make a spreadsheet in word and then make the lines dissapear so it all looks organized and semetrical. :)

Thursday we learned about Excel, which I'm also semi-familiar with because I have to use it at work so much. When I am creating spreadsheets at work I always feel like there are better and faster ways to be doing it. The thing that I'm most excited about was learning how to create a graph! Yes, I know many people already know how to do that...but you have to remember that most of my technological progress has happened since I've been home from my mission. I didn't know anything about blogging, facebook, or even texting! I've come along way, and learning new things is fantastic. Doc (my teacher) explained that there maybe better options than excel to keep track of grades, but it's a great tool if we don't have anything else. I've been playing with excel alot since class on thursday, and feel a lot more comfortable with how it works.

Oh, I also had to build a computer this week...not really, but just put one together online. It took me a little while to figure what everything meant, but I did it. I added every upgrade I could, and in the end my dream computer, which was an apple by the way, would cost me a little over $15,000! Yup, that's right. I was amazed at how quickly all the up grades added up and how expensive they could be...but that's why it was my dream computer! :)

My Sweet Husband

This past week has not been a very healthy one for me. I was having stomach issues early in the week and then as soon as I got over those I got slammed with a -oh so fun- cold. On top of being sick other things in my life have crept up and made for a frustrating week to say the least. Chris was so sweet and did what he could to take care of me. He cleaned the kitchen, brought me water, and gave me hugs whenever I needed one. He also gave me a couple blessings this week which helped me calm down and not be so frustrated.
Today we were just laying together on the lovesac just watching a movie and I realized that once we have kids it will be really hard to just have that time with just the two of us. Don't get me wrong I'm so excited to have kids...I'll admit I've been "baby hungry" for a long time now...but it made me a little sad to that once that first one comes how much things will have to change. I'm sure I won't think that when that finally happens. Anyway, a little while later I went upstairs to lay down for a bit, and I heard Chris singing/whistling some song the way that he always does, and it just made me smile. I just love him. He brings so much happiness into my life.

On a side note, I'm required once a week to write down things I have learned from one of my classes. If you would like to read the weekly updates on what I have learned and how I'm going to apply it into a classroom it's on the sidebar under Reflections. :)