My thoughts on blogging

As a writer that used to pen and paper, blogging online was difficult for me. My first post was hard to write. I started and erased and started again. That's why I chose to answer a questionnaire instead. However, I grew to like blogging. I liked that we were required to read our peer's posts because I learned new things about them and about their ideas of teaching. I, honestly, don't think this class would've been the same without the blogging component. So Kudos to you, Dr. Scanlon.

Blogging as made me rethink my writing techniques and ideas of a writing community because it was digital. Back in my day--showing my age a bit--we wrote something in class and exchanged with a partner or typed it up and exchanged the next day.  I would love to implement digital writing in any capacity in my classroom. Today's students are always online. They're always texting and the internet is right at their fingertips. I think teachers need to embrace it before it leaves them behind.

After completing this blog and writing about different digital ideas, I definitely think I can be an advocate for digital writing among my fellow teachers. Even if the platform is just Google Classroom and collaboration on a document, students need to learn to write digitally because it isn't going anywhere. We can even read the newspaper digitally--and save a tree--rather than have it delivered. Digital writing, as well as blogging, is the future and teachers need to know the avenues for it.

This blog has inspired me to start a blog about my husband's and my adventures of tiny living. If you're interested to following along, I will be starting an Instagram as well as a blog to document our successes and failures. Their are no posts yet, but there will be! Click here

Book Reflection

Instead of writing a traditional review, I used my notes to create a wordle of things I wrote down the most. I really enjoyed Troy Hicks's writing and his theories about digital writing.

Lets play Kahoot!

This week my students are wrapping up Beowulf and rather than test them a traditional way, my supervising teacher and I decided to use Kahoot and Google Classroom to revamp the test. She gave me the quiz to adapt into a Kahoot game. I've played Kahoot once or twice, but I've never created my own. The original test had multiple choice options and short answer - the short answer created a hurdle for me.

I allowed the students 60 minutes for the longer questions, Kahoot will move forward automatically if everyone has answered, so the time frame wasn't an issue. The students really liked having the extra time to read the questions and find their answer since this was for a test grade. Their teacher decided to curve the test and added on points at the end so no one failed miserably.

All-in-all, I think I will make more Kahoots in the future. The students really enjoyed the activity and game it created and it took the pressure off of the actual test. After playing this Kahoot, students got into groups to create one of their own. We spent a few days playing their games before watching the Beowiulf movie.

Here is the link:
Kahoot

Senior Year

This is my last year of college. The last year of my bachelor's degree. It's taken 6 years, several failed courses (followed by repeats of those courses), countless sleepless nights and ugly cries, but I'm finally at the end. Since this is my senior year, it requires an internship. I think it's quite fitting that my internship is with high school seniors that they are feeling the exact same way that I am. I'm done with school just as much as they are. They're hard to motivate and it's hard to convince them that they need to turn in their work. They've already been accepted to schools such as Harvard and Yale - no, I'm not joking. So, why do they need to hand in a 2 minute speech on their hero?

Along with my senior year are the teaching certification exams I have to take. A friend of mine has been teaching for 7 years and the exams were $50 each when she took them. They're $150 and up now. Since this internship is unpaid, I'm required to find some willing relative to pay for these testing fees. And that relative would be my husband. He works hard to pay the bills for both us just so we can turn around and give the money to testing fees. Kudos, UCF, I'm so glad I pay all of these tuition fees and pay for things I don't need. Like the gym; if I have time to work out, I'm taking that time for a nap. Or to wash my hair or do my dishes. You know, everyday things that I barely have time for between classes, internship, schoolwork, and the 2 days a week I do work just to pay for gas to drive an hour to waste the class talking about someone else's research.

This has turned into a rant, and I'm sorry to the two people that do read this, but I always feel better when I get my feelings down in writing. I feel as though the teaching program is organized very poorly. Especially for the secondary education majors. They want us to pass these tests and say that we need to attend seminars for help, but the seminars are all about elementary education. How and when is this supposed to help me for the English exam? TOTALLY worth the hour drive I spent getting here. 

Now, dear Reader, I don't want you to think I haven't enjoyed my senior year. I've met some great people, made connections at a new high school, figured out what I wanted to get my master's degree in, and am enjoying a blissful first year of marriage. 

But, I'm ready for it to be over. 

Tech in the Classroom

As far as tech goes, I would consider myself an intermediate user. If you want to measure my use in the form of tangible technology (iPhone, computers, etc) then I would consider myself an advanced user. I have an iPad, two computers, a Chromebook, an iPhone, and an iPod (as seldom used as it is). In the form of web technology, I would say I’m a beginner. I’m planning on starting a YouTube channel when we buy our RV and a blog for our travels. That’s as far as my website tech goes.

I attempted to visit the Screencast-O-Matic website but nothing would load for me. I really like the idea; I just wish I could’ve seen it in action! I made my own Kahoot and tried it out with my husband (he wasn’t as excited as I was to learn about Beowulf) and I’m planning on fine-tuning it to use in my internship! My teacher asked me to play around with it and create one for the students for a grade. It was nice that it was assigned for this class too! I plan to use Kahoot in my classroom with my students as a fun way to break up the learning/review into a game. In my experience, if students know there’s a game awaiting them, they’ll be more engaged in the learning.

I feel that writing virtually is important for students. I also believe that collaboration is equally as important. GoodReads is one of my favorite websites because classes can meet and discuss books and share their favorites. It opens up a whole new world to discuss reading. Websites like Prezi and Google Docs create the opportunity for students to work together digitally to publish work. Students can edit and share documents to be posted on a blog or website.

After looking at Jane Hart’s website, I really like the use of WeVideo and signed up for a free account. Since I have no footage on my Chromebook, I can’t edit anything or create a video, but can see how this would be an easy tool for students to create and edit videos in the classroom. I like that everything is done digitally. I also really like Remind which I definitely will be using in my classroom to keep my students updated on assignments.

I plan to try out the Kahoot game and Google Docs and Hangout in my internship class. I would like to have the students collaborate digitally and introduce my teacher to digital coursework. She isn’t aware of Remind either so I would like to try to sign the students up for that to use in the course as well.

To house or not to house, that is the question.

So hubs and I have been married for almost 6 months - yay us! Well, we are currently in the state of what to do next. We don't want a baby - yet. So that's completely off the table, we don't even want to think about it. The Girl is enough for us and, honestly, we think we could be happy with just the three of us and our gaggle of cats plus dogs. 

Ever since my 11-year-old self went on a road trip with my aunt and sister, I've wanted to travel. My feet are not planted anywhere. This was intensified when my grandparents bought an RV and we (my sister and I) spent our vacations and weekends on road trips in the comfort of our home on wheels. I also married a man who has never had a true home. 

About 4 years ago I came across the idea of tiny house living and full-time RV living. If you don't know what this is, I'm going to link you to my favorite YouTube channel. It's called Less Junk, More Journey and it's an adorable family that travel full-time in their RV. 

Here's our reasoning for doing it and you, dear reader, are more than welcome to give me your thoughts: 

1. We hate Florida. Don't get me wrong, this is home. I've accepted that one day I will join the ranks of the old ladies in the Red Hat club that can't drive and should not be toting a dog around (in my case a cat). But for now we want to leave.

2. We like new places. We LOVE the idea of not staying in one place. If we hate the weather or the yard isn't big enough, we can pack up and leave. On to the next!

3. We LOVE the idea of educating The Girl with natural elements. For example, museums and state parks. Visits to libraries and seeing national monuments. How cool would it be to see the country in your own home!?

4. We have no real debt. The only debt looming over us right now are my student loans; yes, I have quite a few, but we could pay them on the road. We have 3 cars and all of which are paid off. 

5. My mom owns a home and his grandmother owns a home. If, and Jesus please don't think I want this to happen, something were to happen to them, we'd have two homes. We don't like the idea of owning three and trying to figure out where to live. So either we rent or buy our own home or we get an RV and travel.

6. I can teach online. I don't know if you've looked up online teaching options, but there are tons. FLVS is one of the best options for Florida teachers. My husband is a mechanic and there's a website specifically for mechanically inclined people to get work on the road. 

7. This is our last one and our biggest: my mom is eventually going to need us to support her. She's disabled and I don't foresee anything changing on that front. She plans to have her sister live with her to help her out when we move out, but she'll always need us. Not owning our own home would be beneficial because we'll probably need to live with her and the RV would allow us to travel and still have something that's ours.

So, what do you think? Could you live in a small space if the outdoors was your playground? Would you get sick of seeing your spouse everyday? Please let me know in the comments!

Christmas in... September?

So my husband and I started Christmas shopping. I know what you're thinking: it's September and it's still 105 degrees outside! Stay with me here: My husband is a retail manager and works a ton and I have college classes, an internship, a job on the weekends, and now we have a 9-year-old who we try to enrich with family outings and church gatherings. We decided that the best course of action was to get ahead of the game. We took The Girl (annonimously referring to my daughter) to school and decided to do a little shopping at Walmart because they have layaway.

Since we only have the one kid, spoiling was a must. This will be our last year with Santa and Hubs' first year playing Santa. I had to work really hard to convince The Girl that Santa was even real because an awful kid in her class last year decided to ruin it for her. I don't know who spoiled that kid's milk, but she was very upset by this. Anyway, I'm one of those moms that thinks about the other kids. Yes, I want to spoil mine, but I know that there are children less fortunate out there.

We live by this rule: small gifts are from Santa - Monster High dolls, Baby Alive, play make-up, etc - and the bigger things - bike and tablet - are from mom and dad. I'm trying to avoid her going to school after Christmas break and telling the kids Santa got her the big, expensive gifts when I know that Santa cannot afford to do that for every kid. We also do Toys For Tots and we pick out a gift or two to donate every year.

If you haven't checked out the Walmart layaway policy and are planning on doing it, let me enlighten you on how it works: You get a cart and go shopping for your kid. Once you pick out everything, in our case pile all the stuff in one cart and hope for the best, you take it all to the service desk. This is in the back of the store, not the front, don't be like us. We piled everything on the desk and sorted through what we were buying that day and what was Christmas layaway. We should've used two carts but it was 8 am and no one was behind us.

The friendly cashier was telling us about her $800 layaway for her 4 kids and I was instantly thankful for the one kid. After scanning a few items she informs us that some things don't qualify. The layaway policy is as follows: You pay and pick up at the same location, you have a 10% or $10 minimum deposit - whichever is greater, you cannot put clearance items on layaway, and each item has to be $10 or more. I did not know anything about the $10 minimum on items or that clearance items don't qualify. We picked out clearance Monster High items and some baby doll accessories that were $9.97. We also had Monster High bedding that doesn't count for layaway either.

After putting what did qualify on layaway we paid for the unexpected and moved on. My bedroom closet is now home to the start of Christmas. I'm pretty much done shopping for The Girl, but we still have a few small things on the list. She's never had a Christmas where she gets anything she actually wants.

All-in-all, I'm thankful it's over. Two hours shopping and setting up layaway then we went to our favorite diner for breakfast and coffee. All of this shopping was pre-coffee and no one likes me pre-coffee.

What are you doing to prepare? Are you like me and had to start early? What did your little ones request this year?