Innovation Is The Future

During the summer of 2017 I learned a lot about innovation without thinking of it as just that. I was taught that technology can be used to a teachers advantage in education rather than a disadvantage. I think that if any teacher wants to continue to grow then they need to be able to innovate.

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Photo CC by: Boegh (www.flickr.com)

To me, innovation means staying up to date with things that will enable me to become a better teacher. I never want to stop learning. I will always be a student who teaches what I know to other students. I think it is important to never stop learning.

Everyone is so different from one another that there is no right way for someone to learn. It is my responsibility to determine different ways to teach people so everyone is able to learn the way that works best for them. Technology is a great resource to use in order to research those different ways to make my teaching more helpful for students.

After this summer I plan to continue using my teacher Twitter account. I want to keep up to date with all of the different people who share things about education. I have learned a lot from other followers about different teaching styles and I really benefited from it. I hope that one day I will be sharing helpful things for those educators as well and we can both help each other out.

One thing that I know is super important is being able to collaborate with other teachers. Not only will I collaborate with teachers at the school I will be teaching at, I will be able to collaborate with other teachers over the internet. I think this is a great way to get different ideas a long with bouncing ideas off of each other.

One thing I really took from the article from George Couros is when he says, “I am an innovative educator and I will continue to ask “what is best for learners”.” I want to always do what is best for my students and I will always do that. If I need to learn how to reteach something, I will do just that. I want to be able to be a teacher that can teach any student no matter how difficult it could be.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class this summer and I learned a lot that I will take with me into the classroom.

Teaching Is An Art

Here is my digital story! It is is in powerpoint form! I hope you enjoy it and if you have any pointers on how to make it better, feel free to let me know!

Digital Story

I had a lot of fun completing this assignment. It was a great experience determining what metaphors worked best for me and how I could describe my teaching to you in a metaphor. I think the most difficult part for me was trying to make it into a video. I am not very tech savvy when it comes to making videos on the internet. I hope to learn more about that part of the internet, because I think it would be super beneficial for my students.

I really enjoyed looking for pictures to fit all of my metaphors. I am a visual learner and being able to find the right pictures was a lot of fun for me. I want to be able to give my students all the opportunities in the world.

One thing I plan to do as teacher is to continue to learn. I may not have a lot of time in the world, but I will make time in order to learn newer things each day of my life. I want to be able to give to my students until I die. The only way I will be able to do that is to keep up with information and be up to learning new things all of the time. I am confident my students will be teachers to me just as I am to them.

Attention Log

  1. Date: 7/18/17
    2. Description of Physical Space and Device: On couch with Ipad
    3. Duration of session: 20 minutes
    4. What occurred: I was distracted by makeup videos and started to watch and scroll through makeup videos.
    5. What you did: Put my feet on the coffee table.
    6. How you felt: Content. Anxious to try new makeup ideas.
    7. What worked: I could not lie down comfortably.
    8. What did not work: I was able to sit with my feet resting on the coffee table.
    9. Other comments: None.
  2. Date: 7/19/17
    2. Description of Physical Space and Device: Car on Iapd
    3. Duration of session: 25 minutes
    4. What occurred: We drove through one small town in Nebraska
    5. What you did: Read a book using the kindle app.
    6. How you felt: Scared because the book I was reading was scary.
    7. What worked: Shading my face from the sun made it easier for me to read with my Ipad.
    8. What did not work: I had to stop after 25 minutes because I was beginning to get a headache.
    9. Other comments: None.
  3. Date: 7/21/17
    2. Description of Physical Space and Device: In the car with my Mac
    3. Duration of session: 35 minutes.
    4. What occurred: We stopped at a couple of houses because we were house hunting in Omaha.
    5. What you did: I was surfing the web to try and find affordable houses to buy in the Omaha area.
    6. How you felt: Stressed
    7. What worked: Keeping many tabs helped me better choose which houses worked for us and which houses did not.
    8. What did not work: Trying to understand which neighborhoods were safer and which were not on google maps really confused me.
    9. Other comments: none.
  4. Date: 7/22/17
    2. Description of Physical Space and Device: In the car on my Ipad
    3. Duration of session: 15 minutes
    4. What occurred: We stopped at several stoplights.
    5. What you did: continued reading my book.
    6. How you felt: A little carsick from the stopping and going motions.
    7. What worked: I was able to take medicine to help my headache.
    8. What did not work: Looking around and trying to continue reading my book.
    9. Other comments: none
  5. Date: 7/23/17
    2. Description of Physical Space and Device: Mall on my Mac
    3. Duration of session: 15 minutes
    4. What occurred: I ate a salad while looking at the Internet.
    5. What you did: I was looking for places to stay for the night in Omaha.
    6. How you felt: happy because I was able to find cheap hotels that looked decent.
    7. What worked: It was better for me to use a website that found the cheapest hotel rather than me looking at the hotels websites.
    8. What did not work: I needed to find a place that was close enough that we were not driving a long time.
    9. Other comments: none.

 

I learned a lot while I did this attention log. I had no idea how many thoughts ran through my mind while I was doing certain things. It is so crazy to think about the different body positions I needed to be in in order to keep my attention to the technology and how much my mind was thinking. My mind was literally wondering all over the place and I would need to stop and tell myself to focus on one thing. I would then focus on that one thing for quite awhile before doing those steps all over again. I think everyone should do an attention log just to learn a little more about themselves. It was a really fun and challenging thing to do. I would recommend it to anyone.

My Motivation To Become A Better Me!

Throughout this summer class I learned a lot about exercising and dieting. It was hard at times and a lot easier than I anticipated at other times. I know people always look for a specific answers on how to lose weight and I believe there is no right answer. It is important for every single person to get out there and research on their own in order to find what works best for them. I did not choose just one diet and one exercise, I mixed and matched a bunch until I found what was right for me. Below is the poster I created that I want to hang on my wall to continue my motivation for becoming a better me.

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Not only is this post about journey becoming healthy, I want to talk about the website I used to make the poster. I think it is important to use as much creativity as possible and http://www.Piktochart.com gives you that ability. I had no idea there were these kinds of websites out there that offered so much for free. It really amazes me. I am really excited I got to use this tool because I am student teaching in the fall and I will be able to implement this in my lesson plans.

I loved that there was so much you could do for free and it made me want to upgrade to be able to use all of the features, but I did not considering I am a poor college student. I think every school should be a part of some sort of designer tool online that they either pay for or find for free and incorporate it into the classrooms. I am not very creative and being able to use all of the features this website had to offer I was able to become a bit more creative than I usually am. I really liked that about this.

I believe visual images help some students learn better than others. I would never want to take that opportunity away from a child. If they wanted to use a chart to explain their reasoning I would openly accept that and support it. I want my students to be able to learn in the easiest way possible for them as individuals. I plan to use websites such as this one in my classroom one day. I can’t wait to see the creativity my class will have to offer!

Last 6 Daily Creates!

Are You Addicted To Technology?

After reading the first article by Zen Habits and the second article by Katrina Schwartz, a long with watching the Ted talk video I feel that I have an idea of whether or not I am addicted to technology. While I was in high school I constantly had my phone with me. There was never a time that I was not sneaking a text during class or checking social media whenever I had free time in the halls. It consumed my life at the time and I had no idea. As I think about it now I can’t believe I risked getting detention or my phone taken away all because I was worried about replying to a text I might have received.

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Photo CC by: TopDog1 (Flickr.com)

When I went to college I started to feel differently about my phone. I was living with my boyfriend so there was no one I really needed to constantly be talking to on it anymore and nothing on social media was changing when I would look through it for the 3rd time that morning. It was getting to be the type of habit that was a pain in my butt. I wanted to get away from my phone, but I was still in the habit of always looking at it. Sometimes I would find myself scrolling through things not even actually paying attention, I was just going through the motions. I decided that it was time I take a few steps back and not rely on technology.

To this day I still have social media and I spend time on it. But I am able to leave my phone at home when I go to class and not feel a sense of urgency or depression because I do not have it. It feels good not to have my phone connected to my hip and my constant feeling of wanting to check to see if I have enough reception to surf the web. The one thing that I find myself doing is leaving my phone at home even when I don’t mean to. The only problem with this is if someone needs to get ahold of me it isn’t going to happen because I leave my phone at home.

I don’t think someone needs to completely disconnect from social media in order to be healthy and happy. But I do know that people need to know what feels right for them and what they need to do. While kids are in elementary and high school I think it is good for the parents to step in and control the time spent on social media because all kids need guidance. I would have really benefited from that. Below I have attached a short film that will give you an insight on what being addicted to social media can do to your life. It is really fascinating to see this film.

8 Days Of Daily Creates!!

Wake Up. Work Out. Kick Butt. Repeat.

I found the coolest website that helped me decide which workout plan I needed to follow! The website basically gives you options to choose from depending on what your body type is and from there they give you some workout routines. I will link the website here. After choosing the type of body you have the website redirects you to another page where you can either look at routines or watch videos of routines. I chose the athletic body type and I followed the workout plan it gave me for the entire week. I loved this website because not only did it give me a workout, it also showed me how to properly do the workout.

My eating plan for the week went well and I stuck with proteins and no sugary food. I feel so good mentally and physically I really do not care if there is a difference in my physical appearance or not. I think it is so important to feel good before you can actually look good.

As we are wrapping up our independent learning projects I have learned that it is important to try things on your own before relying on other people or objects to do the work for you. As much time as people spend on looking, buying and taking diet pills they could be making their own diet and workout plan and have started on it already. I feel like people never have the confidence they need in order to just try and get things done themselves and I definitely learned that.

Before starting this I had “tried” doing it several times on my own and I always gave up within the first couple of days. It was nice to have a class where I was made to do everything and actually continue with it rather than giving up. I think everyone should take some sort of class that gives them this type of opportunity, because I definitely benefited from it.

It is really hard for every single person to follow one single diet and workout plan because everyone is different. I had to do quite the research to find the right diet for me and even the workout plan the diet wanted me to do was not exactly what I wanted so I went further into research to find the right workout plan. Everything worked out the way I wanted it to because I took the time to research and determine the right plan for me.

Digital Activism

Digital activism is a lot more common than you think. I see it every day and I don’t even notice it. People are constantly trying to get other people on their same mindset about something and they use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media websites to get their thoughts across. On my Facebook feed I see a lot about Trump and if he is a good guy or bad (to sum it up).

I personally involve myself in digital activisms only sometimes. I stay away from politics and I try to stay away from “drama” over the internet. I do however have 2 Pit Bulls that I love more than my own life and I will stand up for them any day of the week on social media and in person.

Some things that I think is important for people to know before becoming a digital activist is knowing the etiquette of the internet. If you want to be respected for your opinion then you need to respect other peoples opinions even if you disagree with them. I think it is always important to end an argument by agreeing to disagree. It is impossible to change the mind of someone who is so dedicated to what they believe in!

The effectiveness of digital activism is so amazing because someone can reach millions of people from all over the world while they are sitting at home in their pjs! It is really fascinating the amount of people a person can affect by the Internet.

As a future teacher I think I will make it a point to talk about the effects digital activism can have on people. I want my students to know how to safely be a part of any activism they want. I do not think I will allow my students to start or begin an activism during school, but I want to encourage them to do so outside of school. I feel there could possibly be some conflict if I was encouraging them to participate during school hours. I think as long as they have the tools and knowledge they will be able to safely participate outside of school.

I was not aware of digital activism completely until just a few days ago and I did quite the research. I found one girl in particular that I am now following on twitter. She is a digital activism who supports those who experience suicidal thoughts, depression, bullying and a lot of other disheartening things. I think it is so cool that she is using her own knowledge about technology to help others all around her. Check out her twitter feed!

If you still feel that you need more details on digital activism check out this video below.

Dieting… Hard? No way!

Man this week has been so great for me! I have not cheated once this entire day and it was even a holiday! I managed to work the entire day of the 4th so I was not able to have much time to eat junk, which I benefited from. I always thought that eating healthy would always be hard, but it has gotten easier as the weeks have passed. I’ve noticed that I crave water more than soda and I want protein more than sugar. I could have never said that or even thought I would be saying that in the beginning of my blog posts. I think the most important thing for me is the fact that I have been staying extremely busy. I tend to eat when I am bored and have nothing else to do.

My goal to exercise daily is not my main focus right now because of the lack of time, but I am up on my feet at work and I barely ever sit when I do get a break. I know that has to count as some kind of exercise. I am continuing to walk when I have the chance with my puppies and they absolutely love it. I do not love the 90-degree weather, but I push myself through it with some water and determination and I get through it.

My next couple goals include creating a set exercise plan. I want to be able to come up with something I can follow daily and be able to look at and know what to expect for the next time. I feel that I will be able to have better time management if I am able to see my workout for the next day or so. I am going to be looking at some websites that share some good workouts. One of my main concerns is finding workouts that will hurt me more than they will help me. I do not want to be doing a workout and be doing it wrong because I could not properly see the picture description on the website. This is where a personal trainer would be amazing for me. Things would be so much easier if I could afford that!

I plan to continue eating protein as much as possible and drink water all day and every single day. I hope whoever gets to read this blog realizes that not only is being healthy good for you; it changes your mood and energy. It is amazing what a couple of weeks can do for a person.