Finished Project Cont.

I was just looking at a classmate's blog, Melissa, and I really like how she put her project up on the web. Due to the fact that YouTube wouldn't let my music go through because of copyright issues, I am going to attempt it on here!
This project reminded me of another video I created for the classroom which was a synopsis of the play Antigone. I think that this type of assignment would be great for the classroom--After my students read a novel or play, they can recreate it visually as a video. It actually turned out really good.. I will post it too so you can see what I mean!

A finished project

For Multi-Modal Literacies class, I finished my autobiographical project which includes a collection of my favorite books, films, shows & music growing up. I titled it, A Collection of Favorites, and it can be found on YouTube by clicking the link. The only problem I incurred was the music being uploaded to the video via YouTube. I was bummed out about that because I spent a lot of time working on it all! So when it comes time to present it to class, I will be happy in saying I succeeded in uploading a video to YouTube, but I failed to get the music to load. Therefore, I will have to present the old fashion way by either bringing my jumpdrive or burn it to a cd. I look forward to seeing other's projects--I had a lot of fun thinking back to childhood memories. It reminded me when I was a young girl and I used to read books aloud to stuffed animals pretending that they were in school and I was the teacher! Things like that make me think back and wonder if that was some unconscious relation to my future..Ha, Ha.

One paper finished, yet another to start

Well, I finished paper number one for this week, Pere Goriot. Now I need to begin my paper on William Wordsworth. I'm writing about his poem called, The Tables Turned. Has anyone read this one? This is my favorite poem out of all of his. It's about putting books aside and enjoying nature. It also tells readers that nature gives us wisdom that books cannot provide us. I'm having a difficult time finding a lot of sources and deciding what exactly I'm going to analyze, but give it time. It's due on Sunday by 7pm, but I really want to try to turn it in early! (I wonder if professors are impressed by this?) I know that when I am a teacher and if I have a student turning in papers early, I will be absolutely thrilled!

P.S. William Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads is one of the hardest things I've ever read. I cannot get through it!

The beginning of a thought adventure!

Allow me to welcome myself aboard. I am currently in the program for Secondary Education, Integrated Language Arts at Kent State University. So far, I have had an excellent experience gaining more and more anticipation of beginning my profession as a teacher!

Today in my Multi-Modal Literacies class, we learned many examples of things we can use in the classroom and one really stuck out to me. It is called "List Six" in which students must answer in list form. For example, "list six characters in the novel." It included the students forming a circle while one remained in the middle. The middle student closes his or her eyes as the students in the circle pass around an object. When the middle students says, "stop," the student in the circle with the object in hand must answer the question posed by the middle student. If answered wrong, students switch places and the game continues. This can be used as a review game before a quiz or test.

My friend Randi, Mike and I were talking about how we could tweek this exercise because students may have trouble thinking of questions. Also we figured that this game could be used for short answer questions rather than lists. We would have the teacher could put several questions into a hat that students can pull out or students could even write down review questions that they may not know the answer to into the hat to provide answers for them anonymously. I think I will definitely use this in my classroom!

Today our class also discussed a controversial topic. Should professional people have personal pages such as Myspace or Facebook? I know a lot of people do indeed have these sorts of pages to stay in touch with old friends, relatives, etc. I used to have a Facebook, but I deleted the account because it was really consuming my life. I think networks like these become almost an addiction because we want to "stalk" other people's pictures, latest news and gossip, and again keep in touch. But I think if you get to the point where you intend on spending 10 minutes on there which turns into an hour, that is a problem. And that was my problem! I could have been doing homework for class or exercising!!*** I highlight exercising because it is so hard for me to make time for exercising, I am so busy studying and working, that exercise has not been a major priority lately. And to think, I spent that hour on Facebook...

Well those are my thoughts for today. I have two analytical papers to write this week. One about Pere Goriot and one about William Wordsworth.