Mentorship

My mentorship has come to an end. I recieved the students' final essays on Thursday with their grade on them. Maura Moritz had marked all of the essays and also done some corrections on google docs, so I could see what she approved on and what she didn't. Besides some grammar errors, and some structural issues, the essays were very well done. Two out of the three essays recieved a 90% and the other a 95%. All in all I think that those are some pretty darn good marks. I would be pretty excited if I recieved those marks. I hope that I contributed to those marks and helped the students learn a few things about essay structure and over all essay writing. I valued this experience and feel like learned a lot myself. It gave me an opportunity to better my skils of giving contructive criticism. Reading these essays also helped me in my essay writing becuase it reiderated things I have forgotten about. Thankyou to Maura Moritz for allowing me to help her students and to Dean for giving me this opportunity!

Oh! The Grandeur!

I had an extremely blessed and eventful weekend. On Friday, I anxiously awaited class to be over, as I had tickets for the "Whose Line is it Anyway?" show at the Dakota Dunes Casino in Saskatoon. It was simply hilarious. After the show my boyfriend and I tried our hand at one of the slot machines. Now we are not gamblers at all, but we thought we should try it once as we would probably never be back their again. So we limited ourselves to five dollars, we put the bill in one slot machine and came out with nine dollars, we thought maybe we would get even luckier so we tried another machine. We put in our nine dollar ticket and our luck slowly faded. We were down to two dollars and the rebel that Graem is bet it all, I pulled the leever the numbers started shooting up, to be honest we had no idea what was going on but, we ended up with 90 clams! Needless to say we were pretty excited. So we walked away with the money. On Sunday, the luck was still flowin through our vains. We get a call from my auntie and she had some excellent news. She had two extra tickets for the Eagles concert! Graem and I obviously accepted. I am a huge Eagles fan, but my wallet could not afford the show, so I was extatic. The show was amazing. They played all of my favorites, and they sound exactly the same in person as they do on their records. It was by far the best concert I have ever been to, and if I had 200 dollars, I surely would have gone. But since I do not, Graem and I will have to do something nice for my auntie. Anyhow, that was my awesome weekend, I hope everyone else had a great one too! :)

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
-G.K Chesterton

Tech task 12

This tech task was a little challenging for a few reasons. There are an abundance of pointless videos on youtube thus it was hard to find one that met the criteria of this assignment. I thought I would narrow my search and look through commercials. There must be a point to them as they are advertising their item and it must be visaully stimulating for the viewer to consider their product. So I thought it was a good starting point. I found this car commercial and I quite enjoyed it. It was entertaining, and there are many neat angles they use to convey the comedy of the commercial such as long shots, medium long shots, medium and close ups. I liked how it began with their day and the vehicle was the first thing on their mind. When the woman went into the shower and got electrecuted, I liked how they put the camera in a different room, this was obviously to get away from showing the unrealistic event that occured to her, but it was a good idea to show it possibly from her husbands view. I liked that they played tricks on eachother to prevent one another to driving the vehicle, the angles they took, when the man had his hair lit on fire was cool, how they showeed his reflection in the mirror. It was also neat at the end, when the man is driving away and he looks in the rear view mirror at the explosion rather, than us seeing the actual house. They used actions instead of words and I liked that as well. Its also a great song that they chose, "So happy together" by The Turtles. At first we are lead to believe that the song is representing the man and wife's love for one another, but we then realize that it is actually their love for their car. All in all, it kept the viewer intrigued and it must be a good car, if the couple is more intersted in it, then eachother. Kind of sad, but it follows the theme of the commercials unrealistic and comedic nature.

Mentorship

Hello Everyone, right now I am going to do a Mentorship update. I believe that the students are coming to an end with their essays. They are all very well done. There was a lot of revision stages, which I have learned is very important, in University, and simply in everything. Here's a look at how we have been communicating for the past 4-5 weeks. I really enjoyed going through Google Docs, it was a little hard, seeing as I didn't know much about the students, but I thought the process we used to communicate the essays, was easy and effective. I would like to use this method with my students, if I ever have the opportunity. I am still waiting for one more essay today, I think. They all may completed now, and the one that I am waiting for may have thought that they do not need to do any more revision. As you can see, this is a flaw with using Google Docs, and not knowing the students very well. Nonetheless, I have enjoyed reading their essays and offering my help.


A hug is a perfect gift- one size fits all, and
nobody minds if you exchange it.
-Ivern Ball

I'm Goin' Again.

I had been looking at a variety of different sites to do my second story with. One of them was Bubbleshare, and I thought that I would give it a shot. So I joined up. Bubble Share was a little bit easier than Voicethread, but that being said it isnt as interesting. I simply typed in the story rather than speaking it, which can be a plus or a minus, depending on how you look at it. I liked the voice bubbles in Bubbleshare, and also you can add little icons into your slides which I thought was neat. I do not know if this is as entertaining as my other one, but, Bubbleshare didn't stress me out as much as Voicethread. I again, couldn't find where to add music. But one of my videos applys to a visual learner, and the other applys to an audio learner, therefore I am happy with both of them. Embeding both stories was made very simply by both sites even though they were a little different. With Voicethread, it was put right into my blog, where as with BubbleShare, I had to copy and paste the HTML. A plus with Bubbleshare was that I had the option of choosing what size I wanted my story to be displayed in. They both have their pros and cons, much like everything else!
BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

Goin' Up The Country

So, I have done tech task eleven and it was kind of a challenge for me. As I had said before, I wanted to use voice thread. I think it is a really great tool to use in the classroom as people can comment and doodle, two things art students probably like to do. Nonetheless I had trouble setting up my video. It is most likely because I am not the most computer literate person out there, but it did take me awhile. I found how to record my voice, but I could not see how to add music in the background. So I just played the song while I spoke. It may be a little bit choppy, but I still like the outcome of the story. This story may not have been the best for voicethread, but I can see it would be useful for many other kinds of stories, such as Dionnes. You just have to click the exit box, and play if it doesnt show up right away. I got all of my photos, from flickr, but the one map from google maps and the last one is my own.Anyhow, I hope you like it, this song always makes me happy, it is by an old band called Canned Heat.

patience is a virtue, right?

Aloha everyone, I say that because, today in Saskatoon it is not blistering cold. It is a mere, -10. I know it is strange for us to be adapted to such cold, even to the point where we think below temperatures is warm. Anyhow, I love the winter nonetheless, the blue sky against the white ground and the frost make a lovely scene.
The weather is not really what I wanted to talk about today. I was going to begin doing 50+ ways to tell a story assignment. I read a few blogs before starting, such as Dionne's. She said that she really enjoyed Voicethread, so I decided to check it out. She was right, it is a really neat site, so I decided to join up. I wanted to check the criteria for the assignment before I began to be fully sure about what I was doing. But, when I went to do so, the site was not working! I tried on my boyfriends computer, and mine, numerous times, but I think the server must be down. I guess my assignment will have to wait a little bit longer, but I will keep checking the site throughout the day. In the meantime I will play around on Voicethread and check out some other sites that Alan listed.
Hope everyone is having a great weekend!