Happy New Year Continued...

So as I was saying, the next couple of months were alright I guess you could say. 2009 was full of new babies and funerals.. Now that's not 2 things that usually go together in one sentence. Most of my friends either had their babies or were at least pregnant during 2009.
Nothing big, that I can remember anyway, happened in March (besides my being sick). Teresa and Carlos (Joe's niece and his best friend) got married in April and Jen had baby Eddie. In June, Joe and I celebrated our first year of being married and we moved out of the cottage. Aunt Jan retired in January and has 2 houses. She wasn't sure which one she wanted to keep and couldn't really afford the upkeep of both, so she decided to go to Florida for awhile to try it out. While she's down in Florida, Joe and I are renting her house here. It worked out since with the coming of a new baby, we surely weren't going to fit in the cottage anymore (not like we really fit without the baby). Turns out that Aunt Jan really likes living in Florida so we are able to stay in the house until at least March 2011. July went pretty fast for me. The weather over te summer was very mild and kept rather cool and rainy which I must say was great for pregnant girls!!!
Peyton arrived on September 1st. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I love that little girl so much.(I'll wait to talk about her in other posts). Eethan also came in September(Bobette's Grandson). Her daughter Sarah and I became great friends through Facebook while we were both out on our Maternity leave.
Without looking at the calendar, my mom and I atteded quite a few funerals.. my great Uncle Tilt, my great Uncle Nick, Richard's brother Gene, Noel's Grandmother. For a little while there, we thought that we lived at the funeral home. Nothing would have ever prepared me for having to attended my mom's funeral. She passed away October 22nd. (She'll be another post).
Kara and Andrew got married in November. Thanksgiving was so not the same this year. We went to North Carolina this year for Thanksgiving which trned out to be very nice. We had a great time. December brought 2 new babies - Carlos Gabriel on the 3rd (Carlos and Teresa's baby) and Chloe Ryann on the 28th (Kayla and Kelder's baby). This Christmas was a hard one with lots of mixed emotions. It was Peyton's 1st Christmas but it was also our 1st Christmas without my mom. Completely bittersweet.
Pregnancies that are still waiting to come to an end... Alyssa Lynn (Laura and Shaun's baby) will be here sometime in January, Baby Hepner (Kristin and Dan's baby) will arrive in March, and Michele(work) is due in April.
I'm really hoping that 2010 will be a much better year for everyone. I guess we will see!!!

Happy New Year

So not only is it the start of a new year, it is a start to another decade. So now is when I'm going to make myself do more things and follow through with some of the things that I'd like to accomplish. One of which is to write on this blog more frequently (like I had stated in my previous post).

2009 was a year that I would almost completely like to forget. Peyton, my daughter, was the only good thing that happened for me. The year started for us in Westchester Medical Center waiting to find out how Charlie (Grandma's husband) was going to make out after being hit by a car. He is doing great now but it was touch and go for awhile. February landed Joe in the hospital for 3 weeks. He had kidney failure, bi-lateral pneumonia, yeast growing on top of the pneumonia, and gastro-paresis (paralysis of the stomach). He felt like a patient on the TV show House because the doctor's didn't know what was wrong with him at first. My brother also moved to California in February which was hard to adjust to. February I was also disappointed by the fact that I didn't get the full-time job I went for.. which I still believe I should have gotten but was wrongly denied. Oh by the way did I mention that I was pregnant during all this and had really bad "morning" sickness. I quote "morning" because not only was it all day sickness not just morning, but it seemed to be the worst right after dinner. I couldn't even keep crackers down. It sucked!!

I will continue with the rest of 2009 tomorrow since I'm tired...

Starting Again!!!

Getting back into writing. I was reading my cousin's blog and remembered that I had to create a blog for one of my graduate courses. So I thought I'd try again and now do it for myself. With everything that has happened this year, I thought that it might be a great way to vent and let some of my feelings out without necessarily having to 'talk' to someone - since, anyone that knows me knows that I don't really like to talk about how I'm feeling..

So here's to a new start!!! Wish me luck...

Emerging Technologies

I can't believe this class is basically over. All we have left is the final which doesn't seem to be that difficult. We have all learned so much in this course. That's what I like about summer courses. That we can come to class and have everything done at once. There is no waiting to get through an entire 15 week semester. I wish all classes ran this fast and smoothly. It would make it much easier to finish what we need to get done with our degrees. I enjoyed meeting all of you and learning about all the things and ideas that you brought to the class. I also hope that we can all still talk through our blogs to run our ideas past someone. I know that most of us won't have the time to post something everyday like we had to for class, but an occasional blog being posted to let us all know how each of us are doing would be nice. I hope that you all feel the same way.

Have a great rest of the summer and lots of luck experimenting with all our newly learned technology skills in your classrooms.

Michelle

Assure Method

Using the Assure Model for my lesson plan was great. At first I didn't quite understand the format for it, but once I got the hang of it I thought it was one of the easiest formats to use for a lesson plan. I put it in a chart format which seemed to work best for me. Everyone did a great job with their lesson plans.

lexiphanicism

Today's word of the day on Answers.com is lexiphanicism. Does anyone know what is means?

It is the use of pretentious words, language, or style.

Subscribing to this Word Overheard Site is really interesting. I'm learning lots of new words. It also shows you how and where the word was used.

To subscribe to it, click the link below and subscribe using your bloglines.

Word Overheard

Smart Boards

I liked working with the smart board in the lecture center. It was so much easier than the one in our normal classroom. Learning about the smart board was interesting for my presentation. I never realized that there were so many different brands and versions of smart boards. When people talked about the smart boards that they all used, I thought that they all were talking about the same smart boards. Little did I know....

Power Point

I enjoyed learning all about Power Point. I was always able to get things done with Power Point before by trying this and trying that. Now I feel like I have a real sense of what I am actually doing. I had a lot of fun working on my Michigan Power Point and my Emerging Technologies Power Point. I emailed my Michigan Power Point to my boyfriend's family and told them that they had to have it completed before I get there next week. It will be interesting to see how they liked it since most of them have already been there before and seen most of the things in my webquest.

My webquest

I had a lot of fun putting my webquest together. Although I found it difficult at times because you can add so many things to it, I really enjoyed it. I wish that we had a little bit more time to work on it. I know that with more time I would totally get myself carried away on a topic. There is just so much information to go through to put on there for students. I like that if you want students to be able to search the internet they aren't wasting valuable time searching on their own. With webquests you tell them which specific sites to use. I also like the idea of putting your webquest in a power point presentation.

sardoodledom

Sardoodledom was one of the words in the spelling bee competition that is going on in Washington. One of the 11 year old contestants received the word sardoodledom, which means a melodramatic plot. After he composed himself from laughing over the word, he asked the questions that he needed to ask in order to try and spell it and he succeeded.

Has anyone ever watched the national spelling bee? I was flipping through channels one day and I saw that it was on and I was just astonished as to how well these children do in front of so many people. It draws you in and you can't help but watch them and react when they spell the words. If you have never watched it, I suggest that you do.

This reminds me of the movie Akeelah and the Bee. This movie was based on a true story. I thought that movie was great. The process in which these children go through in order to take part in these spelling bees is so impressive. Here is a link to find out more about the movie.

Akeelah and the Bee - movie

Blogs and Furls

Blogs and Furls. If I wasn't in class today, I would have thought that someone was speaking a different language when they said these two words. Now I know better.

Blogging has become a little easier with everyone's help in class and just trying to figure everything out on my own. It can become a little addicting though. If I had the time I know I would probably spend more time on here figuring things out - it's just fun.

The furl accounts I found quite confusing at first. I didn't really understand the point to it. I thought, like many other people, that it was just something that created "favorites". After a little bit of exploring the site, I realized and finally understood that it is a favorites list with the exception of being able to access your favorites from any computer anywhere. This I thought was a great feature. I like that you can view other people's favorites as well. I found that if you put a URL in the topic of personal, only you have access to that site from your furl account.

I also found using the interactive white board to be very hands on and a great tool for the classroom. Today was my first time ever using one and I can't wait to be able to use it more often and learn more about the different types. The box thing that lets the teacher see what each computer is doing is also a great feature that teachers and school districts should have. It's a great way to monitor students without them always knowing you're checking on them.

Blogs in general

In reading sample blogs today in class, I was amazed at how many different types of blogs you can write. The only blogs that I knew about beforehand were through myspace and that is where I can just ramble my thoughts and feelings. The blogs for this class need to have a link embedded somewhere within my text. So here goes my first attempt.

http://central.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/americanstudies/

I like the way that this blog is set up. It shows the teachers blog as the main focus and on the left hand side there is a list of all the student's blogs that you can then link to. When you click on the students' blog links, they post their thoughts and can even add pictures.

I didn't realize that you could do so much with a blog. It seems really interesting.