Final Project

Along with Chantelle Bahuaud from ECMP 355, I video taped and edited Tutorial videos for St. Johns Ambulance. These videos URL’s will be given to people who take their St John’s Ambulance First Aid and CPR-C certificate. As well, the principle of Assiniboia has informed Chantelle that she will be giving her staff the URL’s as refresher tutorials for their FIrst Aid CPR training. 

Chantelle and I videotaped the tutorial scenes with some volunteers at the St. Johns Ambulance office in Regina. When we were finished the taping, we had much editing to do. We had to cut a lot out of these videos as well as do voice overs for all the clips for step by step instruction. We used iMovie for Mac, this program is very user-friendly and made the process much easier than expected. We did 4 videos on Emergency Scene Management, CPR, Severe Bleeding, and Choking. 

Below are the tutorial videos we created:

Emergency Scene Management:

Choking:

CPR:

Severe Bleeding:

Mentorship and PLE/PLN

I decided to combine my blog on my mentorship and PLE/PLN. I did this because I feel my mentorship was a great way to extend my PLN. I did my mentorship with Nellie Deutsch and Susan Carter Morgan. Nellie teaches an interesting program overseas with people from India and Italy. She teaches these students English and does much of the teaching online and interactive. Both classes have Ning’s which I joined through the mentorship. I commented on activity and conducted conversation between students of these classes as well as Nellie. It was interesting to see what you can teach online and how it may work to involve students from other countries. 

With Susan, I mostly emailed back and forth with her and Skyped with her and her class twice. The first Skype we decided what we wanted to do and talked a bit about future goals. The second Skype we did with her class. The school she teaches at is very technology based. They have many Smart Boards and every student has a laptop! As a class we discussed what makes a good teacher and benefits to teaching with technology. It was great to hear students perspective on all of this. 

From my conversations with Susan as well as seeing what Nellie does I came up with an idea for some lessons when I am teaching English in South Korea. I decided it would be fun if I could get into contact with another class of the same age and have an on going relationship with my class and another English speaking class from somewhere around the world. Susan thinks this will be a great idea and has agreed to help me with this through teachers in her school. I think it will be great for my students in Korea to see and hear what students in an English speaking country are like. I expect they will see many similarities and some differences between what they do in school, for fun, for holidays, etc. 

As well, since I decided early this semester to look into teaching overseas, namely in South Korea I had the chance to Skype with people who are already doing so. I skyped various times with these teachers. They gave me many tips and websites to check out regarding recruiters, who to work for, where to go, and where to find more information. 

I tried joining Twitter but realized its just not for me right now. I can see how it would be a great tool to connect people I just found I didnt have the time to keep up to date with what was going on in Twitter world. I found I was only checking it every week or so and that wasnt often enough to keep topics rolling and to build many relationships with people on there. I hope that when I am finished school I may have more time to play around with it, at this time I hope to connect with more people on Twitter. 

Early in the class, I began to blog and comment on others blogs. This was a great way to learn what everyone believes in regarding their teaching. Sometimes I would just read the odd blog and not make comments as well. I feel this class is a great class to take in your last semester to reconnect you with your peers, and make some professional contacts before you get out into the teaching world. 

I have shared my document with Alec, but bellow is the URL to my PLE/PLN

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=peAnFSFLiRGuXDC7T3U5uPw&hl=en

Why Play is Vital

Play is Vital

I watched this interesting TED talk by Stuart Brown regarding play, why it is vital at all ages. Brown discusses his past professions one of which was investigating criminals, some of which were murderers. He has found many of them were missing the play aspect from their life, even from an early age, these people were not exposed to play. This lack of play can lead people to depression which in some cases lead to terrible crimes. Brown also discusses an author who raised in an unfortunate circumstance. His parents suffered with addiction problems, he lived in the inner city, and did not have the privilege of acting his age. When he looked out the window to a playground, he realized this is where he wanted to be more than anything. When he was on the playground, the problems in his life seemed far away and play was what helped him through these tough times.

The story of the author reminded me of my internship at Cochrane High School. Sure many of the students came from similar backgrounds, addictions, poverty, and neglect, but somehow you could tell when the students came to school and were able to work with their hands, socialize, and play, you would never know the situation they had to go back to at the end of the day. It seemed as though school was a neutral zone in the life as a battle field. Yes, some days fights did occur, which was always heartbreaking and unfortunate, but for the clientele at this school, I was surprised there were not as many fights as one might imagine. I think the students all knew that each one of them carried burdens they could not help. Instead of dwelling on these burdens and teasing each other for situations they could not help, for the most part students let home situations stay out of student bickering. In a sense, it was nice for the students to attend a school where they knew everyone had their own problems, and maybe at school their problems could be understood and might not seem unlivable.

Brown also discussing finding your own sense of play. Each one of use has an internal need for certain aspects of play. For some, it could be sports, writing, or art, more traditional forms of play. But for others, play could be mechanics, construction or even solving a tricky math problem. Play comes in many forms, and just because one persons idea of play is different from yours, it doesn’t mean your play is less important. Brown also discusses finding your own play and making it your job. Play should not be apart from your work, but rather an integral part of what you do for a living. This is why some people loath going to work everyday while others cannot wait for their day to begin. I believe this is what teaching will be like for me. As an intern I had some very difficult days, but in the end going to the school everyday never felt like a job. Teaching to me feeling more like something I just have to do. I feel like if I weren’t teaching, I would not be complete.

Lemon Tree- Fools Garden

watch?v=ZdbahvuTT4o

watch?v=O4hHOkAKpxk

 

A friend of mine is teaching ESL in South Korea. She was having problems with the internet today at  the school, so she asked me to try to help her. She wanted to show this youtube video to her grade 7 class, but for some reason youtube was not working on their computers. She tried many portals via facebook, email, etc, and nothing was working for her. I told her I would post the videos on my blog and she could see if they would play for her through my blog. She is going to try them in her class, who knows my blog may be seen in a classroom across the world!

Christian the Lion

 

Christian the Lion

Christian the Lion is a story everyone can relate to. It is about two men who adopt a lion and raise it. Once it gets to be too big to keep in a developed country, they decide to introduce Christian back to the wild in Africa.  After much time has passed, the men travel back to Africa in search of Christian. Everyone told them the lion would be wild and not remember the men who raised him. After much searching, the men finally come across Christian. I think the video speak for itself, this is such a powerful story of love and friendship. Although many people beleive wild animals cannot build loving relationships, especially with humans, Christian could never forget the love given to him by the men who raised him. It was so beautiful to see this reunion. This story gives us all hope to rekindle a long lost friend.

As I am considering travelling overseas in the next year, I find myself worrying about loosing contact with friends and loved ones. This video gives me hope that no matter where you go, or how long you go away for, the relationships that really mean something and are really truely made from love will always exist. Moreover, through advances in technology and the internet, I see that keeping in touch with loved ones may not be as difficult as I first thought. I have a relative in South Korea right now who is teaching English and I find myself facebooking her every other day. As well, about every two weeks or so we skype each other and end up talking for hours. I have learnt so much from her and it definatly doesnt feel like we are across the world from each other. I hope when I go overseas I am able to utilize the internet and all it offers.

Benjamin Button and Calculus/Geometry?!

After watching the movie the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I found myself intrigued by the character Brad Pitt played. I find it fascinating that Brad Pitt played Benjamin from start to finish, from old to young. Although I beleived this when I watched the movie, I was interested in finding out how they made Brad all these different ages. I came across the following TED talk session and I found myself connecting many theorems from my Euclidean Geometry class and my History of Mathematics class I am currently enrolled in.

Benjamin Button\’s Face

As I watched this video I thought I would just watch it for pure movie interest. As I continued it occured to me that the method used to form Benjamin’s face actually used a ton of mathematics, namely Geometry. In my Math 308 (History of Math) class, we are learning about many different mathematicians from over 3000 years ago. We have gone through some of the more known such as Euclid, Archimedes, and Aristotle, as well as some less know mathematicians. It is interesting to see how Math has developed over the years and where we started from. Before Archimedes we did not have pi, the constant needed to find the area of a circle. Before him, many mathematicians tried and tried to come up with a way to find the area of a circle using what they knew. They knew how to find the area of a square, rectangle, triangle or any polygon, but the circle seemed impossible. Eventually a mathematician named Eudoxus came along and was trying to solve the area of the cirle. He tried many things, but eventually came up with the idea that he could split the circle into many different triangles, squares, and polygons and add these areas up to get the area of the circle. This method was called the method of exhaustion. If anyone has taken Calculus before, this sounds familiar because this was the beginning idea that eventually developed Integrals.

Now, Im sure you are wondering what this has to do with Benjamin Button right? Well, if you watch the video you will see that the team that created Ben’s digital face, used a similar method to the method of exhaustion! The old technology they had could create an image made from about 100 polygons. This image was not very realistic and quite crude. As they experimented with many options, they found one where they coated Brad’s face with a special makeup, put him under special lights and the digital image of Brad’s face was now constructed by about 10,000 polygons. This image was much closer to reality. From this, the team made images of Brad’s face doing every action possible. Then, they made a mold of Brads face and created an “old version” of Brad, chiselling away and forming it so that the mold would still have Brad’s structure, just made older looking. Then, they imposed the digital Brad’s facial expressions onto the mold (diigitally) and more or less, they produced Benjamin!

Many people do not believe math is interesting or practical at all. These people need to open their eyes and realize math is everywhere! Whether it be in nature, at home, in your car, or in your favourite movie, math can be found as the source. Some people believe that math is not neccisary, at least not more than basic operations, but here, we can see its practicality. Moreover, I think this would be a great video to show a Calculus class. They could see the connections and hopefully become more and more interested in what math can do.

Discovery Education

I am taking a post-internship Education Mathematics class right now. In this class, we are discussing many different tools to use in our teaching. One of my fellow collegues presented an online tool called Discovery Education. Discovery Education is through the Discovery Channel, there is an infinite amount of options to use this tool in your teaching! We were mainly focusing on the math portion of this site, however there is information on pretty much any subject out there.

There is everything you can think of at Discovery Ed to help your teaching. One main tool is the video search tool. It is similar to YouTube however totally geared toward an Education viewpoint. Moreover, you dont have to worry much about the videos being appropriate because it is an Educational site. As well, you can the videos have different starting points so you dont have to fast forward through a one hour video to get to a 5 minute scene in the middle of the video. You can just click on that scene (kind of like scene selection on DVD) and start there.

There is also many. many lesson plans! As all of us new teachers have found in our internship, you can never get too many lesson plans. You can search a subject or more specifically a topic and Discovery Education brings up a bunch of lesson on this. Best of all, these lessons use various tools such as  videos and other online activities and resources. Luckily, the person who did the presentation to us on Discovery Education gave us her login name and password and now I can go and snoop around all I want. I cant wait to see what I will find!

Should I Stay or Should I go?

So as if it wasn’t enough to have the many school divisions from across Canada at the Career Expo, I am now wondering if i want to stay in Canada! I have always thought I would go overseas eventually but was always unsure of when a good time to do this would be. On Thursday my friend and fellow Math Ed graduate put a seed into my head. What if we went overseas in September? At first I thought I wanted to go after a year or two of teaching in Canada and then go overseas a little later but now I am wondering “why not now”?

If I choose to stay in Saskatchewan I’ve already made the decision that I would like to stay in or around Regina. I know getting a position in Regina as a first year, no experience teacher, only happens with a miracle, and I’d been thinking I would probably sub for a year or until I’m offered a contract. Now I’m wondering why would I waste my time here when I could go overseas now. Right now I am young, have no car payments, no mortgage payments, and no family. Or as one could say no responsibilities! The longer I wait, the more responsibilities will come my way. 

As well my cousin is teaching in Seoul, South Korea and is loving it! She taught in Swift Current, SK for 3 years before she went. I asked her if this was a good decision and she said there are two ways of looking at it.

1. the more experience the better. If you intend to work for an international school eventually its better to have home country teaching experience. As well you get used to teaching before you are engulfed in a new culture. On the other hand,

2. If she would have went overseas as soon as she finished school, (about 3 1/2 years ago) she would have almost all her debt paid off! This is huge! I would love to come out debt free. 

As well, If i went next year, my cousin would still be in Seoul. I think I would want to go to Seoul as she would be there to help with the culture shock. And Seoul seems like a pretty great place from what I’ve heard. Its not too expensive, I could save and pay off a lot of debt, and meanwhile not super sketchy like some other options of teaching overseas. So I definately have some things to think about. In the meanwhile, my cousin gave me this website to check out for recruitment. This is the site she used and thought they were a really easy organization to go through. 

footprints recruiting 

Career Expo

So Monday was the U of R’s Annual Education Career Expo. First of all, I would like to acknowledge my appreciation of the staff of the Career Centre at the U of R. I am so happy they put this event on, I know its a big  job but it is worth every frustration of planning. There were people representing school divisions from all around the world, mostly from Saskatchewan and Alberta. Having this Career Expo has forced me to start making decisions on where I might like to start my teaching career. I think for now I’d like to stay around Regina. I have applied to Regina Public, and am working on applying to Regina Catholic. I am also considering working around Regina. I think  I will apply to jobs in Prarie Valley, Prairie South, and Southeast Corner Stone.

 I found at the Career Expo, Southeast Corner Stone showed the most interest in me. As soon as I said I was a Math major, they were very excited. In the contrary, when I spoke to Regina Public and Catholic they were excited when I told them I interned at Cochrane Community High School. It is interesting to me to see the differences in what school divisions are looking for. I think my expeperience at Cochrane appeals to Regina because not many people are “brave enough” to work at these tougher schools. My experience at Cochrane was to rewarding and such a great learning experience that I would love to work in a similar situation. Although it was great at Cochrane, it still excited me to work anywhere. I would love to work in a non-modified classroom, because lets face it, most students in a modified math class are not excited about math. In all, I dont think I will be too picky, in fact I’d even consider a middle years position!

Trying out Google Apps

After the amazing presentation by Lisa Thumann, I found myself trying out a few of the apps she showed us. I already knew about most of the apps from ECMP 355 but i found myself having a higher apreciation for them. I already knew about Google docs and some of the implications there, but it was nice to see what was new. The survey tool looks like it would be great for Educators. I think this would be a nice way to present a review assignment (in math) or even just take home homework. If you told the students the assignment would be on the web when they got home this would hopefully help them revisit subjects and could provide a great study tool.

The week before our “google class” I signed up for google reader. I did this to subscribe to various blogs. It was working quite well but I was finding it hard to remember to check it. Then Lisa showed us the implications of igoogle! I love igoogle! Before igoogle I was having a hard time remembering to check all the great things alec (or others) sugguested to look at or follow. Even with google reader, I found myself forgetting to check google reader. Now I have my email, facebook, twitter, google reader, and many other widgets on my igoogle page. I made it the hopepage on my computer so it forces me to check out my e-life before I do anything else. Its been a great organization tool.

As well, it was great to see the option of google for educators. I liked that we could have access to students acounts, as well we could remove apps as we felt necessary. For instance, the google chat app could have great implications to your teaching, but you might want to remove it to get the students full attention at times. I cant wait to use google in my class! Thanks again Lisa!