Shhh! Don't Tell!

This is me having fun with some gift ideas for ShaNeil and Russell. I know that I should not post gift ideas online because its a gift, and that little sister of mine reads this blog, but I figure that she is so stressed with wedding plans and school work that reading my blog is not a high priority. I also would like to mention that every time I post something new, I don't necessarily need praise...in fact, I would love feedback, but mostly I just like to share what I have learned and what I have created. I promise, I am NOT fishing for compliments! :) So, tonight while I was in class I played around with images from Flickr in order to create this collage of ShaNeil's new last name. The shape and size is not quite right yet, but in theory its kind of cool. I am using Adobe CS3 (Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign), programs that I have become accustomed to because I am the school newspaper advisor. This particular piece has three layers, one solid black, one for images, and one for text. It is MUCH easier to work in layers when you are trying to be creative. I am not offering to sell my mad skills (as Michelle suggested in an earlier note) but I would love to sit down with anyone who wants to learn a few things. Or, if you have a project in mind, suggest it and let me try it out as practice. Let me know. :)

My Little Sister is Getting Married!

And here is the announcement that I designed. :)

Hips

My Honors English 10 students are reading The House on Mango Street today. We just started the book, mind you, and I have not taught these students for several weeks. I asked them to choose a vignette (a short little section of the book) and then make some inferences about the text. One boy raised his hand and said, "This vignette reminds me of you!" I asked, "Which section?" He replied, a little embarrassed, "Um, Hips." Awesome. So, I made a face and said, "Oh. Let's move on." He said, "Wait. No. It's just a few sentences. I want to see if other people agree." He proceeded to let the whole class know that they should turn to page 51 and read the first two lines. They are as follows:

"I want to shake like hoochie-coochie, Lucy says. She is crazy. I want to move like heebie-jeebie, I say, picking up the cue. I want to be Tahiti. Or merengue. Or electricity."

WHAT ON EARTH DOES HE MEAN?

Lucky Me!

Dear Ms. Cook,

In follow up to a letter sent to you on February 24, 2009 and in accordance with District Policy, I am pleased to inform you that your contract for the 2009-2010 school year will be renewed, providing that the economic conditions in the state do not require further cuts to the District budget.

I appreciate your patience during the last month while the District could not make promises to provisional employees. Also I appreciate your willingness to work hard and serve students during the past year. Thanks again for all that you do.

Sincerely,

_______________________

Awesome. I get to keep a job and fill my classroom with 40 students at a time! There were three teachers cut at the high school level.

Kisses!

My Life in Words

So, today I was playing around on Wordle and came across the option to create "word clouds." You are looking at the same blog post as below, although this version seems much happier. Agreed?

Week 12: Tag Cloud Things

I just made a Wordle image using the text from our high school media center page. It is amazing! I can already think of so many uses for this. If you want to make your own, you can click here.

Week 11: Podcasts, Video, and Downloadable Audio

So, I am including an embedded video from Youtube. This clip is a music video from many years ago, and it brings me absolute joy. Namely, I think that the main female singer looks lovely and innocent and the male vocal lead looks a little creepy. And, I love the background dancers. Pure genius.

I subscribe to several podcasts via iTunes. I love This American Life and Radio West. I listen to these podcasts on my computer and on my iPod. I have also been able to share them with students. In October, we listened to Old Time Radio Thrillers. I have actually turned students on to some podcasts also.

I have tried to use Pioneer Library's downloadable audio files, but since I have an iPod instead of a regular mp3 player I am unable to use these files. :(

Saddest Day Ever

Due to a series of unfortunate events, today I lost three year's worth of files. I no longer have a computer record of the past three years of my life and I am sad, perhaps depressed. Can you say a prayer for me? I know that I cannot recover the files (this is not really miracle-material . . . they are gone for good!) but I would sure like to have some sort of piece of mind and be able to sleep tonight. I have been crying nonstop because we are talking COUNTLESS hours that are lost. Beautiful worksheets, stunning rubrics, assignment guides galore. Gone. All of the assignments I have submitted and still needed to submit for my Masters degree. No longer. Letters of recommendation I have written. Vanished. The homework that is due at midnight. Hmmm. That would be nice to find. Sadly, nope.

I have hard copies of many things, and I am going to put my TAs to work re-typing the big stuff. My mom called this afternoon and I started sobbing; she left work to come to comfort me. I love that woman, who understands my stress and pain. I know, I am crying over files, but, man. It's like I've lost the record of my life.

Week 10: Spring Break!

Spring Break is AMAZING! :)

Week 9: Online Applications and Tools

I have never typed anything in GoogleDocs but it basically brings me joy. I know a lot of students who have trouble transferring files from home to school. At first glance, it seems like GoogleDocs would be a fantastic fix, but I go right back to the problems we have with blocked sites at the district and this very useful resource is not available. Curse the filters!

Last summer, for my Masters program I had to do a group presentation with two other students. We shared all of our files through Google. It was very handy.

As a Clarion advisor, I have used GoogleDocs with some of our advertisers. Alyssa's Bridal has a Google account on which they store all of their print ads. It's pretty genius. The interface of this looks much like Word; overall, GoogleDocs seems like an incredibly user-friendly program.

(p.s. This post was typed in GoogleDocs and then transferred.)

Sisters Do As Sisters Should...

Mucho Better, Yes?

So, I played around a little bit this afternoon and my sister Angie introduced me to the brilliance of digital scrapbooking. I am NEW to it, and felt slightly overwhelmed. AND, I am SO embarrassed that you saw my earlier attempts! I am fairly savvy when it comes to using the technical programs, but I had NO IDEA that these sorts of possibilities existed. So . . . drum roll please . . .

THE NEW MOCK UPS!

Graduation Announcements :)

So, these are my mock ups of graduation announcements I am considering. I think I like #2 the most. In the blank white spaces, there will be geeky pics of some sort. Respond to this post and tell me which you like most!

p.s. I have not done anything with fonts yet because these are just sample layouts. The end.

Hire Me!

Juab School DIstrict sent out a harshly worded certified letter last week to all provisional teachers informing us that our services may not be needed next year. Suffice it to say that I am worried. I feel as though am I competent and successful within my classroom, but I won't know about anything for sure until April 1st. April Fool's Day. What a horrible day to be informed of my future. Stay tuned.

My Ephraim Home

Last summer when I was working at Snow College, I lived at Lamar and Elaine Cook's home during the week. They were fantastically generous and loving and completely made my summer more joyful. The fact of the matter is, Elaine is someone who I hold dear to my heart and I will pretty much do anything I can to let her know that. Elaine is just getting back into the real estate business, and I wanted to share her new website with you. Just click here to give it a read. Enjoy! :)

Week 8: RSS and Newsreaders

This week I learned about RSS; RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed is a document that contains either a summary of content from a web site or the full text of a website. RSS feeds makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites automatically rather than checking them manually.

I think that there are many things about RSS in my mind. I have a list of websites that I view on a regular basis, but it is no where near "simple" for me to keep track of those sites. On my personal blog, I have a feed of blogs which I read, and I must admit that it saves me so much time. I do not have to spend time checking each blog, but can rather sign in to mine and then see my friends' updates.