Mommy of a Monkey (& a princess)

Today we ventured to the zoo. Obviously we have more important things to do, but the Dino exhibit just opened and we had to explore it. It was cool, loud moving dinosaurs were scattered thru out. Monkey was a bit scared in some parts, but I think he liked it.

I’m sitting here writing something on my blog, watching the Joy Behar Show, surrounded by articles that I should be ready and annotating for my annotated bibliography. I’m tired and need a day off. Instead, I’m taking the last 30 minutes of my evening to do something that I don’t usually let myself do — NOTHING. 🙂

Went to a fantastic workshop today. It was too much stuff to learn in one day. I’m sure there are many a class at my college that last the entire term and do not attempt to cover all of the material we tried to cover today – in just ONE day! But I feel like I learned some useful things, feel excited about the potential for learning more. I’m looking forward to May – when I have a few (or two) weeks off to focus on working on enhancing my LightRoom skills. I wonder if I can take another course at my college in addition to the two at the U? Will it be too much? I would prefer a two-three day workshop on LightRoom. I’ll have to search for one.

School is fab, other than crazy busy. I love my courses, love what I’m learning, and feel like I’m more part of a community than I’ve been in a while. It’s amazing how they’ve gotten us to work together. Clearly they are modeling the correct methods for us!

Off to find that course and maybe plan a trip for spring break. Or not. We’ll see.

Joan Frye Williams presented the talk/webinar “Top tech trends for the non-technical” on 11/30/10 at InfoPeople.org.

Her talks are always inspirational as she is an out-of-the-box thinker. She is a library consultant that frequently works with libraries to predict future trends and to implement technology in user-friendly ways.

This webinar focused on current technology trends and the ways libraries should address them. Her main point seemed to be that libraries and librarians need to change their thinking. It is not about us and how we have always done things, but should be about our patrons and what they want and expect.

Donald Leu and his associates are advocates of a new type of literacy.

This article, from February 2002, (Internet Workshop: Making Time for Literacy – http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/RT/2-02_column/) feels a bit dated, yet it includes several great ideas for implementing technology and information literacy skills instruction in the early elementary school classroom.

Leu’s idea is for teachers to create activities that allow students to have guided internet searching exposure. The freedom he incorporates in his assignments will allow for students to find different information so that they can all share without hearing the same things over and over. 🙂

“TPACK: Game On” by Karen Work Richardson in Learning & Leading with Technology, June/July 2010, 34-35.

Technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge is a model of teacher knowledge in educational technology. The model was created by Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler in 2006.

The model can be used for professional development for instructors. Richardson presents information about a fun game she uses to get instructional faculty to think about the connections that can be made between technology, pedagogy and content. 🙂

Her game is simple.

1. Create three lists/rows of slips of paper that each have a content, technology or pedagogy listed.

2. Put the slips in three separate containers.

3. Have group members play by selecting one slip from each of two of the containers — they can then brainstorm what could be used as the third part to successfully integrate the first two in their course.

4. Then have participants pull one slip from each of the three containers and try to come up with a potential lesson using all three.

This game will provide participants with the opportunity to brainstorm ways of thinking outside of their comfort zone.

My definition of Educational Technology:

Educational Technology is any technology that can be used to enhance or improve education, this includes technologies that are not directly involved with classroom instruction, i.e. technologies that are used in the administrative realm and in the libraries. This differs from instructional technology, as instructional technology is directly related to the technologies that are used for instruction.

Technology is a term that has many meanings. Some think of technology and only think of new electronic items, computer systems, and software programs. In my definition, technology can be any system that uses some external device or item to achieve the desired result. A set of markers with paper could be a technology, just as students using a wordpress blog could be utilizing a technology.

More to come… this was just part one of the assignment.

So the monkey went to daycare a few times over the past three or four weeks. Every time he goes there it seems that he ends up sick. So the first time he went back – he came home and had a cough a few days later. The cough is still with us. He went back earlier this week and has now developed a cold. The last time he had both the cough and cold it got fairly serious fairly quickly – so I rushed him to the pediatrician this time. She was wonderful and gave me instructions and a preventative prescription to fill if needed. All is okay on that front – except that I’m now sick.

I have to go back to work officially, full-time, on Friday – so I have 5 days to get over the illness before I go back to work. The monkey has a few more days because he starts his preschool on the following Monday. I hope that we both recover in time.

Other than that – we’ve had a fairly productive few weeks. We’ve been visiting Disney regularly – trying to get as much use out of my pass as we can stand during the hot summer months of Florida. I’m sure we’ll appreciate it more in the cooler months – but those are also months that we’ll be super busy!

Audiobook listening is progressing well. I’m really sticking to my 3 hour per day rule – so have been steadily moving through my assigned titles. I hope I can keep this up once I return to work. But only a few more months of “new titles” then we’ll be able to catch up on the assigned listening and start voting. Should be very interesting!

School reading isn’t progressing as well as I would like – but I have so many other things on my plate… The new book I’m reading is “How we decide” by Johah Lehrer (could be incorrect author). It is very interesting, seems to expand on many of the ideas presented in “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. In fact they refer to many of the same studies, yet Lehrer is examining the studies and presenting more of the data.

Trying to get to bed earlier tonight – need extra sleep to recuperate.

The trusty steed seems to be a crazy steed as well. She has had a bit of a rough summer – her best friend Ebony disappeared (she passed away in early June), her human dad disappeared (he deployed to Iraq in the middle of June), her friends the cats disappeared (they moved out with their mother to a new home at the end of June), and she is very itchy (we don’t know why). So she follows me around everywhere. AND whenever I leave the house, even just to the mailbox, she howls and cries like a wild animal. I hope she is able to manage when I go back to work in 4 weeks…

Other than that, summer is going okay. We now have an annual pass to Disney, so the Monkey and I have many more Disney trips planned before we both head to school. Friday we went to the Magic Kingdom. This week we plan to go to Animal Kingdom. I’m not sure if he is ready for the other two parks. I guess I’ll have to check out the list of rides/activities at Epcot and Hollywood Studios (formerly known as MGM Studios).

Tomorrow is a beach day. We’ll try it again, as the Monkey really enjoyed it last week. I’m so happy to live in a place with so many great outside activities for us to do. Some even for free! 🙂

The hubby seems to be getting more settled in his new temporary location. Thankfully the television problems were resolved with the purchase of a new different television! This should allow him to have some fun “tv time”. He’s also able to participate in softball games, eat well, work out regularly (if he chooses), and gets free laundry service!  Too bad he is so far away. We are really looking forward to seeing him in person again, luckily we have skype – so we can see him on the computer.

Enough writing for now – off to read about the power of thinking….