Campus Event Reaction: Blog Post #7
Campus events hosted by the Georgia Southern the Office of Student Activities and other groups, are great ways to meet new friends and become involved in your school. Activities range from a watermelon cutting to job fairs. Most likely there is an activity that reflects your interests and lifestyle.
There are a great deal of fun and exciting activities offered during the regular semester and during the summer semester. Personally, I rarely attend any of the activities because I commute an hour to and from school, and during the regular semesters, I am usually off campus at an elementary school completing required observation and teaching hours. Unfortunately, this summer I was also unable to attend any activities. As mentioned earlier I am rarely on campus and commute to and from GSU. Since I was unable to attend any activities, I researched summer activities hosted by the College of Education and found very little. There were mainly workshops about how to use GeorgiaView and other instructional resources in the classroom. One workshop that caught my eye was “The Buzz on Social Networking.” The subtitle explained that this workshop reviews how teachers can step outside of the box and utilize social networking tools as teaching tools. Another workshop that seemed interesting to me was a workshop entitled “Build a Learning Module.” The subheading explained this workshop gave advice on how to create instructional models for students in GeorgiaView. Both of the workshops are scheduled for July 16, 2010 in the Education Building. There were similar workshops held during the summer that reviewed how to use GeorgiaView and other tools useful for instruction.
Podcasts: Blog Post #5
Technology has given us the means to make a lot of things easier. Now, if you want to hear the news or the latest research findings, you can simply download them from the internet in the form of a podcast and take them with you anywhere. I am an early childhood education major and am always looking for the latest findings and information about how children learn. I searched for podcasts on elementary and early childhood education and found a few interesting ones. The first podcast I listened to was Asian American Research: Early Childhood Education: Balancing Vygotsky and the Veda. The individual they interviewed was a very interesting woman who moved from India to the United States. She taught in both countries but had to overcome cultural boundaries and methods of teaching when coming to the United States. She speaks about how India is a country who relies on the Social Constructivist Theory of teaching and Vygotsky’s ideas about how children learn. Vygotsky and his theory state children learn more through social interaction than physical means, while they draw on cultural experiences. After coming to the U.S. she changes her strategies and demeanor to try to become a good teacher. Then, she relates her experience to Colonial India. It is a very in depth but interesting discussion. Next, I found another podcast on iTunes: FPG Voices: Early Childhood Research and News This podcast is created by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is dedicated to interviewing individuals with new findings and information on Early Childhood. The interview consisted of an individual who studied children who spoke a different language than English, in a Pre-K classroom. She found that Spanish speaking children were much more likely to be bullied and teased by classmates and that there was no data showing a relationship between the Spanish speaking children being immersed in English and becoming more proficient in English. Also, she found when teachers speak to children in their primary language, those children were less likely to be victims of aggression by their peers and teachers rated them higher on social skills. The last few podcasts I found helped me strike an idea. A series of podcasts were made by classes at Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha Nebraska. The children would record what they learned, new interesting facts, a vocabulary theatre, and a few jokes. Wow, the children seemed to be having fun and I know they retained that information because they were having fun applying it and the information could be listened to again and again. I plan to have my students create podcasts in my own classroom!
Twitter Spells Fun
I must say when I saw the week on Twitter assignment I thought “Wow, this is going to be annoying and a waste of time.” Well, I was proven wrong. It took a while to understand Twitter and how it works, but once I got going I thought, “Wow, this is fun.” Through Twitter I was able to see my classmates and put faces with names, as well as learn a little about their lives. I was also able to follow other people, groups, and organizations I was interested in. I found one particular person I was following very amusing. It gave humor to BP and the oil spill. I enjoyed reading their Tweets and laughing about this horrific accident (as bad as that may seem.)
After a week of tweeting and finding people to follow, I must say I now enjoy Twitter. I will continue to use this site to follow my friends and classmates to learn a little more about their lives, keep up on current news and issues important to me, to market myself, and for pure enjoyment. These are also reasons why Twitter is of value to me. I am a busy person and don’t always get to watch the news or ask my friends what new is going on in their lives. Twitter allows me to do both and with my BlackBerry, I can use Twitter from almost anywhere.
Since I have enjoyed Twitter so much, I will be encouraging my friends to use this network. I will explain the benefits of using Twitter and how they can market themselves to find jobs or other opportunities. If you are reading my blog and aren’t a Twitter user, go ahead and try it! What can it hurt? You will be amazed how fast you learn the ropes and how much you enjoy it.
Blog Review
Planning a wedding can be quiet stressful. Thank goodness we have the wonderful internet to help. While researching unique favors to give out at my wedding, I ran across an interesting blog that I have visited quiet a few times now. The blog was created by a woman who calls herself Bakerella. She has started a new revolution in baking. She came up with the idea of making miniature cakes and putting them on a sucker stick. I know it sounds silly but when you look at these miniature cakes and the objects you can make them into, it is amazing! After viewing this blog it came to me! This would be a great favor that would be cute and special because it was made by the bride herself. So, I’ve attempted to make these cake pops and they turned out wonderful. The next time you are going to a party or just want to surprise someone, this is a great way to do it. They will be amazed to see the cake pop and will love the taste!
Since my major is early childhood education, I’m obviously interested in children, learning, and how people learn. New information is being researched and published each day so I figured, why not find a blog relating to early childhood education or learning. Most of the early childhood education blogs I found would not be very interesting to you. They entailed how a teacher taught and how their students reacted, or what was happening in the classroom. After researching some more, I ran across a blog called “Educated Nation/Higher Education Blog.” Well, most of you reading this have some form of higher education and are always learning in some form. I found a great deal of interesting information on this blog. Fair and equal education is a big deal and is highly stressed for teacher. This blog explains a little about why so few women seek higher education in math and science. You will be interested in what you find! Have a happy reading!
Thanks,
Katie Jessica Best
