Livin' La Vida Loca

University of Regina from the 5th floor of the library

No reason for the Ricky Martin lyrics except that I really do feel like I'm living a crazy life.  I wish I could report I've got some exciting vacation planned like my Facebook friends who all seemed to have made it to a beach somewhere in the Caribbean this winter.  It's okay..I think you're all great and I'm just really, really jealous.  I also must remember that I had a fantastic trip to Italy a few short months ago.  It just feels like forever since last summer after this extremely long, arduous winter.

I just spent the afternoon at the university working on my thesis...here was the view from the window.  At the very least, it's a nice view and it's not hot and sunny.  I am okay with working inside when it's freezing outside.  Of course, I made the mistake of calling home to ask Jeremy for a favour and Aleena had just tossed a couple rolls of toilet paper in the toilet.  I guess things could be worse.  She's hit the terrible twos times about a hundred lately.  I'm sure Connor went through this phase but it's certainly draining.  Speaking of her, she's currently in a "time out" for throwing toys...I should check on her to make sure she hasn't destroyed anything.

Okay...back.  No major damage!

I wish I had more time for blogging and am sorry my mommy blog has been non-existent as of late.  I guess that's just part of being a Mom though...especially a full-time working Mom with way too many things on my plate.  I do have a few things I REALLY want to share soon though..like my half marathon training and my new obsesssion with all things Banana Republic and my new bestie MyFitnessPal.com.  Future posts might include some education-based rants about increased school hours or standardized testing.  I've got all sorts of things to write about!

I'm going to end this for today and read some books to the kiddos before bed.

Things that make me smile:

- Connor's knock knock jokes...here's one:

Connor: Knock! Knock!
Dad: Who's there?
Connor: Donut!
Dad: Donut who?
Connor: Donut let me go outside in the backyard by myself!

- Aleena waving into the toilet after she flushes it.  

- Connor saying: "I had a lucky pee" after a successful trip to the bathroom.

Thanks for reading! 

#ETMOOC | Digital Literacies for EALs

Welcome to my blog!  This is my first post contributing to the #ETMOOC community.  I had meant to join in the fun earlier but life is busy and time has passed me by.  However, I saw the topic for the next couple of weeks and knew I had to jump in head first because the topic was perfect.  I wrote a paper for a Masters class a couple years ago on digital literacy for EAL (English as an Additional Language) students so this is an apt time to share what I researched and documented.

Here is the paper...I had hoped to revise and make it less academic and more reader-friendly but it wasn't happening so this is better than not participating at all:  Downloading Multiliteracies into the EAL Classroom

As a follow up, I haven't used Fan Fiction with my students.  I am not too worried about making it "uncool" by presenting it to students.  I am certainly a cool enough person to get them excited enough to participate.  In fact, I might give it a try this semester with the students in my higher level literacy class.  Up to this point, my struggle with trying something like Fan Fiction has been the students' lack of fluency in writing and in computer skills.  Attempting simple blog posts have literally taken a couple of class periods and constructing a written piece let alone typing it out on the computer is extremely time consuming for students new to the language.  As a result, I concluded that a reasonable amount of technological literacy was a pre-requisite to attempting such a task and have kept it in the back of mind as something that I would still like to try someday.

I realize there were some thought provoking questions to ponder on the #ETMOOC blog and I may get around to a couple of those yet but I've got a thesis to work on and it's calling my name...and that voice is becoming increasingly louder as each day passes.  Hence, I will contribute as I can to this community and you can be sure that no blog post from this day forward will be as thorough as today's. :-)  Enjoy.

Apps Galore at the Apple Learning Tour

I took advantage of a great opportunity to attend an Apple Education Seminar today.  I learned all about Ibooks, Itunes U and lots of education apps.

To be honest, I almost feel embarrassed when I admit that I had no clue there were so many fantastic educational apps available out there that I didn't know about.  I usually consider myself to be knowledgable about using technology in general but I guess I missed out on this somehow.  I've downloaded my fair share of apps but never delved into the world of educational apps.  Here's how to do it in case you are also a bit clueless.

First of all, check out the Apple Education page for lots of useful resources.  For apps in particular, you can explore the Apps page.  You can find apps for various subjects there.  There were dozens of apps available on the IPads provided for us to use during the seminar.  I could have sat there for another week just playing with the IPad and checking out the possibilities of all those apps.  I took some photos of the ones they provided and plan on downloading some of the apps that looked the most useful for either my students or my own children.

Of course, you can also find education-related apps on the Itunes store.  If you go to "Apps" and then click on "Education", you will find hundreds of education related apps.  Some are free and some are much more expensive.  I expect the cost for useful apps will be covered for teachers depending on their funding for such things.

I hope to blog a bit about the apps as I use them and learn more about their effectiveness.  I am particularly excited about trying some of the language learning (ESL) apps with my students and seeing how their interact with the devices.  I expect that using IPads will really help engage some students and hopefully motivating them to learn! 

Finally, I am interested in trying out the Itunes U course manager and seeing if it would work with the devices that students have available.  Just for fun..here I am looking happy in my Itunes U course manager profile picture today.  More to come...