BrainPop Videos

Today we watched some really interesting videos on the BrainPop website. This website has educational videos featuring two cartoon characters. The videos we watched today were about internet safety, blogging and the internet. I thought after the break it would be a good refresher about internet safety and blogging.





The videos are great! They only last about four or five minutes each and they give the main details about each topic. The blogging video gives an overview of what blogging is and some general rules about blogging. It also talks about video blogging and picture blogging, which is something I would like to have my students get into.

The video about internet safety basically says the same thing as the Globaloria information about internet safety. It discusses five general rules like not putting your personal information online, making sure you know who you are talking to and telling your parents or a teacher if you feel you are being bullied.



All three of these videos are valuable to remind us to be vigilant about blogging and internet safety. Remember, we are trying to blog at least two times per week! Also, don't forget to update your learning logs. Your assignment for this blog post is to tell me what you learned about internet safety and blogging from watching these videos. Please include your plans on keeping your learning log updated. Let me know if you have any questions!

What are you thinking?

Close your eyes and write about what immediately pops into your head. Hmmm...that's a difficult thing to write about when there are a thousand things swimming through your head. I guess the first thing that pops into my head is Christmas and getting everything done before Saturday rolls around. I still need to buy Emily's bunk beds, buy presents for my mom, dad and brother, and wrap them all! Meanwhile, we have school until Thursday, which is seemingly really late for us to be going to school :(

I also didn't get my check from Globaloria. I am supposed to get a stipend every quarter and the one for the second quarter won't come until after the first of the year. I was hoping to get it before Christmas because that was the general consensus, but it is not going to happen. I am praying it isn't like the quarter one checks and take six weeks for us to get them.

I guess those are the biggest things on my mind right now. Although, I can't forget grading papers, finishing lesson plans, updating Edline, talking to parents and the other general treachery duties we do daily. This really is the busiest time of the year!

So...your assignment is to blog about the first thing that pops into your head! Make sure it is school appropriate and add text, photos and links! Your response must be at least three paragraphs. (5 sentences each paragraph) Your post must make sense. It must be coherent. Do not post about Ms. Jones. DO NOT COPY AND PASTE YOUR TEXT FROM ANOTHER WEBSITE!

Goals...

It is always important for people to set goals. Without goals, we are just trudging forward without knowing where we are going. In our class it has been difficult to set goals because we haven't been sure what is working and what isn't and where we want to go. However, today is a new day! We have our Flash issues resolved and it should be smooth sailing from here. To go along with the new Flash installation it is important for us to have new attitudes and to set some goals.

While I have personal goals for this class like to be more organized and try to keep one step ahead of problems, I think it is important to have class goals as well. I have come up with a list of goals we should start working on. These goals include:

• Updating our learning logs-people can't tell how hard you have been working if you don't flaunt it :)
  
• Blogging-everyone needs to blog twice a week. One post needs to be about what you are working on in Globaloria. The other post can be any topic that is somewhat school related or related to your progress in this class.
• Mini game project-starting today we are going to go through the minigame project as a class. Please make sure you are keeping up with the programming.
• Staying on appropriate websites-people can see everything you do. You do not want to lose computer privileges because you can't stay on task.
• By Christmas break we want to have the mini game project completed and posted to your wiki pages.
  

• Have fun! This class is a lot of work, however, it is supposed to be fun!

I know it seems like I am asking a lot from you, but we really need to buckle down and get things done. If you have any questions, let me know.

Your blogging assignment for this week is to respond to this post. You must tell me at least four personal goals you have and two or three bad habits you want to break when it comes to Globaloria. You may also include any ideas you have to help the class become successful. Keep in mind, you should not discuss any particular student, just the class in general. Thanks!

Snow Days...

This is the first day we have had school this week because of the snow. I hope we have many more snow days to follow, although it throws off our Globaloria progress. The weather channel is predicting we will get more snow next week.

Things to do this week...

So, with Thanksgiving fast approaching, we are going to try to wrap some things up this week. Some of the things we need to finish are the mini game project, paper prototyping and posting the results on the wiki. We also need to make sure we are blogging two times a week and updating your learning log. After Thanksgiving, we are going to move on to actually making our games in Flash.

Video Blogging

To video blog or not to video blog...that is the question?

I think we will try video blogging in my Globaloria classes. My kids are very adept at using technology and many have posted on video blogging sites such as YouTube before. My main problem is they are forgetting to write on their blogs at least twice a week. It seems like I have to remind them to blog daily, and by the end of the week some of them haven't blogged at all. I wonder if they will be more diligent bloggers if video blogging is an option.
I don't blame them, really. Sometimes it is difficult to find something to blog about, or sometimes the assignments take longer to complete than one week, so they don't get to the blogging assignment until two or three days into that section of the course schedule. However, it is something we need to work on; getting two blog posts per week, every week.
I think I might try to find them something to blog about other than the assignments listed on the course schedule. If anyone has any ideas for blogging topics, let me know.

Ayiti...the addiction.

So...my kids are addicted to the Ayiti game on the playing to learn section of the course schedule. The game is very basic, but for some reason, that's all they want to play. The basic premise of the game is to have your family of Haitians live for four years while meeting their basic needs. They have to have to have jobs or go to school, and their efforts to prosper are constantly thwarted by natural disasters, robbers and disease.
So far, I have only won the game twice. The first time, my family almost didn't make it. I had one person left and he had a miserable life. The second time I won, I was able to have the whole family live, but they had an "okay" life. However, many of my students have been able to have all of their Haitians live and have good lives.
I guess until we get our flash installed (seemingly never) then we will continue to work on choosing a game topic, researching and playing "playing to learn" games.