ASL Project Over, But Not Done

I am going to start off my explaining my title, “ASL Project Over, But Not Done”. Though my course is over and I have no obligation to continue learning ASL, I will for the benefit of me and my future classroom. I still have a long way to with ASL though my course that I decided to learn this for has officially ended.

I wanted to learn ASL for several reasons, those reasons being, 1) To gain a better understanding of the deaf community, 2) To benefit my future classroom and students, 3) I have just always wanted to learn ASL and figured it could be a benefit for me in my future.

I am glad I began my joinery on learning ASL, I find it very enlightening, and practical to learn. I have been learning slowly but I have been improving. I have even got the chance to speak to a family friend that is mostly deaf. I have known him since I was younger, and him and his family stopped by for a visit, and I got a chance to have a conversation in ASL, however it wasn’t a lengthy conversation. I didn’t record the conversation as I felt it would be rude to do considering they were there for a visit. Either way, he was pretty excited and told me that I pretty good for a beginner, but I think he was just being nice. Our conversation basically consisted of him and I talking about me learning ASL and where I stand with it, as well as making fun of my dad. He loves to bug my dad.

So lets recap of what I have done:

1. What to Learn, What to Learn…
   1. I decided what to learn and let you all know
2. My Journey Continues – ASL Learning Project
   1. Here I learned introductions as well and numbers up to 10.
3. Learning Project ASL #3 – What Day is it Anyways?
   1. Here I learned the month, days and a few others.
4. Live and Learn
   1. With this day I learned words that revolves around family, as well as learned some conversation questions.
5. Back From the Break, and the Learning Doesn’t Stop
   1. Here I continued with words that resided with family that I forgot to do the week before.
6. Welcome to the Farm… In ASL!
   1. This was one of my favourites, I learned words that I could possibly use more, were signs that resided with the farm, such as cow, horse, duck, tractor, etc…
7. What’s your Favourite Colour?
   1. This one was rather short but here I learned the more common colours such as the primary colours and secondary colours.
8. What Should I Wear?
   1. Here I learned practice signs about clothing.
9. All the World is Made of Faith and Trust and Pixie Dust!
   1. This was my favourite blog to make about ASL, I learned a song in sign “Lost Boy” by Ruth B.
10. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish!
    1. This was my last video blog on ASL and I learned a Dr. Seuss book with signs that I was already familiar with.

I have had such a great time learning ASL, and I am sure I will continue to enjoy it. To learn ASL, I used the internet and used many different sites and phone apps. Some of the online resources I used were Sign Savvy, ASL University, ASL Resource, and Youtube. Some Apps I used were ASL, Sign School, The ASL App, and Learn ASL Lite (sorry I can’t link all of the apps).

I have received lots of feedback on my blogs/vlogs on my ALS journey and as time went on, the comment got more and more helpful. Some blogs got more comments than others but I made sure to do my best to answer everyone.

I asked for help several times throughout my blogs, and I finally received some help by the end, thank goodness and it was a great idea and thats how my last video came to be.

I had a wonderful time in this course and I am glad the opportunity to learn ASL, this course gave me the budge that I needed to get started, and now that I have started I can continue with my learning. Though this #LearningProject, I didn’t just learn ASL, I also learned how great online resources are and how helpful they can be. I also discovered that to have online resources you don’t just have to use the internet, you can also use apps. This can go to show how important technology can be for a classroom. There are apps that you can use with your students and they are still learning something. Though books can still be good resources, there is just so much more that you can find online and on the internet in todays day in age. I am glad I took this course and would recommend it for anyone who wants to learn about technology in the classroom.

Catch ya’ll later!

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Final Networked Learning

Throughout this semester I learned a lot of new things to do with blogs, twitter, and everything in-between. I learned that having a positive digital identity on social media, including twitter and blogs, is a very important thing. This doesn’t just mean having an identity, it also means to comment and support other professionals through social media.

Through the semester I have shared resources on twitter, as well as links to articles I read for my blogs. Sharing resources is a big part of being in the educational world.

It is important to help others out by giving advice or ideas, and just supporting each other. One way I did this was on Google Plus, one classmate was asking about video editing programs for computers, and since I have had a P.C and now have a Mac, I have worked with different video editing programs, and put my two cents in. I also answered a similar question on twitter.

As I blogged through the semester, I found it helpful by reading others blogs and seeing what they had down. which this sometimes led me to asking questions about what they wrote about, to get further information.

I also commented when I found the blogs I was reading interesting and gave encouraging words.

I also took every opportunity to reply to people who commented on my blogs, and gave me their inputs and thoughts.

I also took opportunities to share resources on twitter, as well as comment on tweets and answer comments on my tweets.

This class has come to show me how wonderful the internet can be, but sometimes you have to take the good with the bad (trolls). There is such a great caring community on twitter and on blogs. Its nice to be able to connect to other educators and other professionals on different areas of social media.

If you are interested in seeing other comments I have made check out this link below.

Comments and Replies 

Thank you for following me on my journey in this course, but now its time to start my own journey through twitter and blogging on my own.

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Summary of Learning

Throughout this semester I have learned so much about technology in my EDTC 300 class. I have all this to thank Katia Hildebrandt for, she has been an amazing instructor and brought many things that follow technology to my attention, such as how important it is not only to have a positive digital identity, but how important it is to have a digital identity of some sort at all. We learned how to blog and how to create a twitter account, and how we can use them for educational proposes.

Thought this course I had my struggles and difficulties, as I’m sure others have had as well. In the beginning I had a lot of trouble with figuring out how blogging worked and all the other tricks that come with it. Though this course I learned how to create pages within my blog, as well as categories for every type of topic to fit into. Katia also gave us great advice, and encouraged us to have a positive E-Portfolo on out blogs. Which on mine you can find my Teaching Philosophy, an example unit plan, assessment, and planning.

We have been taught how to be responsible on the internet and how important it is to teach our students to be responsible with an online presence. We also got a great opportunity to learn something new throughout the semester, in which I chose to learn ASL, and if you want to check it out, it in on my University Sources page, under the category Learning Project.

For my summary of learning, I paired up with Rebecca Hitchens, and we created a video that summarizes all areas of what we learned throughout in the semester through a little skit we put together.

I had a great time with this class, and a big shout out to Katia Heldebrandt for being such an amazing instructor, thank you for everything.

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One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish!

Last week, I asked for some help, and I received it (thank goodness, and thank you to all that gave me ideas!). There were a few tossed around, and I liked them all, but I decided to do the storytelling about words I (somewhat) already knew.

The story I decided to do in ASL, is a favourite story of mine, from my childhood by Dr. Seuss! Though he has many good children books, I decided to go with one in my top five, “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish”. I found the story on Google, on an online PDF. There were a few signs that I didn’t know so I had to look them up and I used my favourite website to learn ASL on, Sign Savvy.

Any way enough about me rambling on, please enjoy my video below: (p.s. sorry about the random, obvious later in the day clip, put into the video, I accidentally deleted the video with that part in it)

Thank you for watching, I hope that you will join me next week on my journey with my ASL Learning Project!

 

I Cant(‘t) Code, How About You?

I have never tried to code before in my life… and let me tell yeah, that stuff get complex fast. I practiced coding on Code Camemy with the Code of Hour, and it was harder than I expected. I decided, since I’m a HUGE Disney fan, I decided to do the “Frozen” Code of Hour.

At first I was a little cocky, and thought it would be easy, well let me tell you, I counted my ducks before they were in a row. By the time I got to level five, it had been easy, then it all started to go over my head. And I feel pretty dumb now, because it was supposed to be easy, yet I struggled. I did eventually pass, but then struggled on level six… I was barely over a quarter way and I was failing hard. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t passing level six, I got all ten squares done…. just not the way the game wanted me to. And as it turned out I made it more difficult that it had to be.

Every thing after that seemed to go swimmingly, and I wasn’t really struggling anymore, even though I had no idea what I was doing the whole time. I just went with it and guessed most of the time. I did eventually get the certificate, but I don’t think I’d like to do it again.

Coding just isn’t my thing, I don’t find it fun, infuriating yes, challenging yes, but its not something I enjoy. I know how important coding is, but I think if you got into it, I has to be something you are very interested in. I know without coding people would have games, and computer programs, which for a teacher these things can be very important.

Hats off to people who enjoy (and can do) coding.

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All the World is Made of Faith and Trust and Pixie Dust!

Good evening! Hope everyone is having a great day!

Last week I told you guys that I wanted to learn a song, because I saw some other people doing it and I thought it was a great idea so I “stole” it. I didn’t tell you what song I decided to learn last week, and I thought about it for a while. I got a song stuck in my head and I thought “what a perfect song to learn, if its stuck in my head anyways might as well”, also I really like the song. The song I learned in ASL was “Lost Boy” by Ruth B.

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This song was a bit tricky for me to learn and it took a lot of practice. I only new a sign or two going into it, so I had a lot to learn. One thing I enjoyed about learning a song is that I learned a bunch of new words that I would have otherwise probably have not gotten too for a while. To learn this song I went to Youtube and looked up people who have done the song. The first one I went to was “ASL How to for Lost Boy” then I went to “Lost Boy by Ruth B in Sign Language” to see if how they did it, and I noticed they did it somewhat differently so I kind of mixed them together once I did my video. Before I made my video I also checked out “Lost Boy by Ruth B in ASL” to see if this girl did it a different way, but hers was the same as the second. Oh but there was this one “Lost Boy – ASL Cover” that I looked at, and it confused the heck out of me, I am too much of a newb for it, lol!

Unfortunalty my attempt is no where as good as the ones I have listed but I did try! Check it out below!

I now there is a bit of a glitch in my video, and that is because I had to edit it and put in the last bit of the song. I had too many interruptions and after restarting the video 9 times I decided just to edit it. My cat kept scratching at the door, my Fiancé kept yelling at the cat, people were coming in and out of the house, and my dogs decided to bark. So, yeah I got annoyed, so I just finished the ending and edited in.

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As for next week I have no idea what to do! I need ideas, and if you have any, please comment and let me know. Maybe its something you want to see done.

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Are you Disorganized? Well do I Have the Thing for You!

There are so many tools out there that are great for educators and some that maybe not so much. But I found a really great tool for teachers that are disorganized, which you really can’t afford to be. In saying this and keeping you wondering what I am talking about, let me get to it. I looked into a tool called Planboard. The site has aids that tells you what to do when you being. You do have to create an account, but it is free. Yay!

When you start up you account, it asks you to put in a semester, so I just put in what would be next years first semester to Christmas, just so I could see what this tool was all about.

From there you create your class schedule by adding in classes and the times you will be “teaching” them.

Once you have your classes in, you can you schedule daily, weekly, or monthly.

Here is were I began to get confused. It wanted my to put in the expectations for the class, and I wasn’t sure what it meant, and the search bar continued to say “No matches”. I was getting frustrated, until I decided to try numbers, and bam, something popped up. It was mostly USA curriculum stuff, so I attempted putting in Saskatchewan Curriculum, and the search lite up with different grades, and classes. However, it didn’t have everything and that was a down fall, but it does allow you to add, what they call “Standards”. The only thing with adding your own, you have to add in everything, outcomes and their descriptions.

This isn’t the only thing this tool has though. It also has a Mark Board as well as and Attendance Board.

To do a lot of the things on the Mark Board you need a student list, and you can do anything in attendance until you have that student list. However there are still some things you can do with the Mark Board. These things include adding types of assessment,

adding your students (when you have them),

and fixing or changing the categories and weight of assignments.

One thing I really like about this tool is that you can add your daily plans onto the board and project them onto the smart board for the students to see. there is also a little yellow sticky note thing that you can add anything to. You can also link google drive documents to your classes, so I linked all of my unit plans that I had for the classes that I created.

As teachers, we all know we enjoy our time off to recuperate, and on this tool you can add in holidays, which is important to add in. The reason it is important is because it adjusts your schedule so you can pick up right where you left off and not have to remember was day you were on last. And if you are really organized, you can create another semester and its classes so its ready for you when you get back after the winter break.

This tool is a very great tool for teachers that like to be organized or need to get organized. It is a bit confusing at first to navigate around, but it gets easier with use, as most things do. I do recommend it, I know I will be using it once I am teaching.

To set things a bit more straight:

Strengths:

1. helps with organization
2. does attendance
3. has a marking board
4. has a reminder post
5. you can create a class schedule/ timetable
6. you can link google drive docs
7. can add daily plan
8. can add different sections to the same class if you are teaching it to multiple groups.

Weaknesses:

1. “standards” are confusing to use in the beginning
2. doesn’t have every sask curriculum grades
3. doesn’t have every sask curriculum classes
4. if it doesn’t have your class you have to manually put everything in.

 

Me when I first started to use Planboard

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What Should I Wear?

Today’s video is on clothing, and once again this video is a bit shorter. Since clothes are part of our everyday lives I thought I would be a good idea to learn them in sign. I did look up certain words, such as jeans, however I only found these words in finger spelling, so I left them out of the video.

For this video, I learned my ASL for clothes from my favourite website to learn from, Sign Savvy. There were a few others that I checked out, such as Life Print, but I mainly used Sign Savvy.

My video is below, check it out!

Thank you for watching this week, and as I said in the video, I am going to try and learn a song. I  have heard of others doing it, and thought that it was a cool idea, and decided to steal it and try it out myself.

Hope everyone had a great first day of spring!

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It’s a Scary (Social Media) World Out There.

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The internet used to be just something I could use to find answers or play games on. Now there is a new dynamic of use for the internet, and the thing is, is that it’s not that new. We now have social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many more. These allow for gateways for people out there to hide behind their screen and call people out for doing something regrettable. Now a days these people are hitting harder than ever, and don’t realize the damage they do for some of the things they comment, while others are fully aware. Social media was meant to connects us to one another, and though it does do that, it can also tear people apart, and leave them broken.

I remember when I was in high school I heard the story of Amanda Todd’s suicide, and the reasoning behind it.  Remember thinking, it’s awful what people drive others to do, it’s sad. I just recently re-watched the documentary on Amanda Todd’s story, and it made me think of how one little mistake can wreck a person. Everyone has made mistakes, some worse than others, and some too proud to admit to their mistakes. But in the end, we are all human, it’s in human nature to make mistakes.

Technology can be a tricky thing. Jokes can be interpreted wrong, and people only see/hear what they want to. We can all express our freedom of speech, but there is a responsibility that comes with this freedom. We all also have the right to feel safe, but that right is taken away when people get attacked personally on social media. Like in the Justine Sacco situation, if you watch the Ted Talk “How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life”, it explains how she made a distasteful joke that was misinterpreted by the world. People were calling for her to get fired, which she did, and some were calling out that she be raped and get aids from that. Yet on that one remark, nobody called this person out for rape culture.

Way back when social media was hardly if not a thing, people would get shamed and threatened on the internet and personal lives would be ruined. Like Monica Lewinsky put it, this is now called cyberbullying, and it’s a real issue, especially in todays’ society. She experienced it first hand, and is still haunted by her mistake back when she was 22. Now that we have larger scales of social media, things can get around faster, and easier. Just take a look at SnapChat. It’s a way to communicate with people or show people what you are doing, and its pictures are only meant to last up to ten seconds. But there are people who screen shot, and there are even people who hack accounts and gain all the private photos of people.

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As educators, it’s important to teach students the repercussions of misusing social media, and how we should be making positive environments within the web, instead of negative ones. We should be teaching how to use our rights and freedoms with responsibility. Students should learn there are two sides to every story, and though we get to choose what side we see, it’s important to know and understand both.

Cell Phone Use During Class Time

There has been a great long debate on whether or not children should be allowed to use their cell phone in class. There are many reasons to support it, and many reason that support against it.

I personally am all for it, as long as they are being used for educational purposes. If the cell phones are being used for any other reason without giving the students permission, such as them playing games or checking there notifications during a lesson or work, then I believe the cell phones should be taken away temporarily. I have never been against listening to music while students work, or letting them play on their phone once their work is done.

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This video below is a text message conversation between an upset parent, who has been told by their child that cell phones are never allowed in the class, and a teacher who doesn’t allow cell phones in the class room unless they are being used for educational purposes. This video was created by Miss Hitchens and I, check it out!

This isn’t necessarily how a conversation would go, we are by no way stating all teachers are against technology in the class, nor are we saying this is how all parents would act.

Here is the list of the resources used within the video.

1. “Cell Phone Harassment“

2. “Why you should listen to music while you work, according to scientific findings“

3. “IS MULTITASKING BAD FOR STUDENTS?“

Here is a list of extra resources for the “Great Debate”:

Technology should be used:

1. “4 Benefits of having mobile technology in the classroom“
2. “Advantages of Using Cell Phones in the Classroom“
3. “Pros of Cell Phones in School“
4. “Cell Phones at School: Should They Be Allowed in the Classroom?“

Technology should not be used:

1. “Cell Phones at School: Should They Be Allowed in the Classroom?“

2. “Why Phones Don’t Belong in School“

3. “Cell Phones Should Not Be Allowed In School“

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