Saturday, July 19, 2008

Learning so fast...

In my limited experience with myspace and livejournal page customization, I've taught myself a little bit of html and taken one workshop on web design. My accomplishment of the day (besides catching up on some sleep, eating two delicious meals made by my roommate and making a pot of coffee) has been figuring out how to add web videos into a post manually, without the help of the little "add this to blogger" button. It's actually pretty easy, but I'm proud nonetheless. Rather than being one of those people who proudly states that I'm "technologically impaired," like our fellow edublogger lamented, I am determined to learn how to do this stuff one step at a time, and have fun while I'm doing it.

If any of you are interested, you can see my addition on the other blog I keep with some friends from undergrad, Angry Poststructuralist Mob (the videos are really funny, although perhaps not totally relevant here). Despite the esoteric sounding name, it's really just a bunch of gender studies majors taking issue with the wack world around us. My friends who blog with me are witty, brilliant and a pleasure to read, so I'm honored to get to blog with them. If you click on my profile it will give you a list of my blogs and you can read that one, I'm pretty sure. Please let me know if there are any problems with the privacy settings.

Despite realizing that I'm going to have to work on my time management skills this year if I want to get my work done and have a life worth living outside of school, I'm really glad to be in this program right now. I'm feeling lucky to be among such inspired and interesting classmates and can't wait to get to know the folks in my content area - and everyone in Group B, for that matter - better. Make sure to check out Rena's poll about one potential method for doing this... :).

Also, I'm interested to know if any other SMACers (professors or students) have ideas about how to use technology in the classroom to cover the election in (social studies or other) classes this fall. Does anyone have any recommendation for a particularly good newscast site for this sort of thing?

9 comments:

Leanne said...

Good idea...I'm particularly good at Wii bowling. And my dinglehopper comment was in response to the what came first, fork or spoon...Little Mermaid reference - dinglehopper/fork
Hope you got your groceries!
Leanne

Liz Kolb, Ph.D. said...

HI Chloe
I am a big fan of the CNN iReporters (to get students involved and interested in the 2008 election) and MTV Choose or Lose Campaign (again students can participate). Google's News Globe is great for current events Google News Globe

Jeff Stanzler said...

I just read about a new resource called watchdog.net that does a nice succinct job of collecting basic information about US congressional districts. It's cool because it ties together visuals with rankings on some key criteria (percent of residents at or below the poverty level). I read about it on edublogger Jeff Giddens' Preclectic blog, which is consistently interesting and practical:

http://preclectic.blogspot.com/

Brenda said...

Hi Chloe,

Just fostering some A2B conversation. I am with you on the time management problem. I don't know where it all goes. Well, some is spent reading all the smacers’ blogs. It seems like just yesterday we were learning each others names and now we are voting on a end of summer event.

Brenda

Ben said...

Since I love esoteric sounding names (especially when I don't know to what they refer), I think I'll have to check out your other blog. But I have to tell you, I'll be holding on to my identity as "tech-inept" long past when it ceases to apply.

I've also got to say that I'm really jealous of you social studies majors right now. You have a "pedagogical jackpot" this fall that the rest of us can't touch! I new should have been a political science major!

Jennifer said...

Hey Chloe! First off, another livejournal user! Yay. That was how I first entered the world of blogging.

And I definitely understand how you feel about learning how to post something manually. The first time I learned about html tags and their many varied and wonderful uses, I was so proud (I had to put a web page together for my freshmen year). Funny thing is I learned how to use html similar to you; I had to take a one day crash course on tagging and page editing.

Unknown said...

Hi Chloe!! Congratulations on coming to the end of your summer semester with MAC. It is a crazy time but the challenges make you more prepared for what the rest of the year will bring. Write down as much as you can so when your head clears from everything that is being thrown your way you have a record to refer to. As for resources, I have some that I will look for and send to you via email. One recommendation is to sign up for the listserve for AP Human Geo and AP Government through the College Board even if you are not teaching those classes. Teachers share amazing resources through that medium!

Cathy Gaschen

Jeff Stanzler said...

Chloe (and others)...
Joyce Valenza is a wonderfully creative media specialist in Pennsylvania who is well worth watching for the creative things that she comes up with. On her blog, she's just starting a collaborative wiki aimed at creating a thematically linked collection of resources (she calls them 'pathfinders'), in this case on studying the election. So, you could both go and get resource ideas, or share things that you might find along the way.
Check out Joyce's blog

Chloe Root said...

Thanks for the great resources!