Back to Blogging...

I've been gone this year from blogging, and I can't believe it is already April! Only two months from the end of the school year. People weren't kidding when they said that your first year of teaching is hard. It has been more challenging than anything I have ever done in my life, and I have gone through childbirth and the first year with an infant. Teaching is difficult!!

That being said, it is also one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done. I have learned so much from my students and learned so much about myself. I have been able to build relationships and help kids in school, in their lives, and in their futures. Really, there is nothing like it in the world.

So, as I begin my blogging journey again, I'm considering my options for providing content here. As I move into my 2nd year of teaching and a new class with new content, I want to provide resources for other computer and business teachers so that they can add some tools to their repertoire. Some of the things that I'll be sharing you may have used before, and some may be completely new. I hope that you can find some insights and some tools that will work well for you!

We are in full testing season over the next couple of months. In particular, kids are taking the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) test. In celebration of the occasion, some teachers (including me) dressed up. I'm a "PARCC" Ranger on the left. It was fun to see people smile as I passed by. This is part of teaching. It may be silly, but it is completely worth it if you can make a student smile and have a little fun doing it. So, don't be afraid to break the mold and try something new! Even if it means that you have to step out of your comfort zone! See you soon!

Brushing the Cobwebs Off

It's almost time to get back into the swing of things! I'm still teaching at Front Range Community College this summer, but I haven't even looked at curriculum for the coming fall at Rocky Mountain High School (for shame). I'm beginning those endeavors next week as I move into my busy July month. I also signed up to coordinate the Summer Day Camp (Vacation Bible School) for our church this year, and that is happening July 14th - 18th.

I came across a couple of blog posts that I wanted to share. I'm realizing that as a teacher, I was super excited to have the summer off, but the summer is flying by like never before. I'm going to a benefits orientation at the district office next week, and I start orientation and work on August 11th. Not to mention all of the things that I need to take care of in between.

So, this blog post made sense to me, and I'm going to slowly burn through most of these things. One of my students brought up the "slow burn", which I determined that I do without even realizing it. I have to work in all my spare minutes to get things done; otherwise, they don't get done. Anywho, I digress...

The blog is here: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/top-12-summer-tips-teachers-vicki-davis?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=blog-top-summer-tips-teachers-link

I also found this 70+ Resources for Social Media in the classroom that was an interesting read. I'll be looking through it more over the next week to determine what really is good and what can be set aside: http://www.edutopia.org/social-media-education-resources?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=resource-roundup-social-media-image-repost

Take a look and see what works best for you, and have a happy and safe July 4th Weekend!

Making room in our lives

Guy Kawasaki posted a great article about Arianna Huffington's new book, Thrive. See it here: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140324113914-2484700-let-s-stop-the-glorification-of-busy?trk=mp-author-card

Guy points out some of the highlights of the book, and I acknowledge that these people are probably the biggest hypocrites of all time. They have worked 80 hours a day to get where they are now making hundreds of thousands of dollars so that they can now live the life they want. I know that most Americans would rather sit back and enjoy life than sit at a cubicle writing up TPS forms and answering emails. With the cost of groceries, electricity, gas, and healthcare skyrocketing, how can we do this? It doesn't seem like an easy task to me after spending the last three years near poverty. We are finally digging our way out, but not without a lot of sacrifice and a lot of challenge.

All that being said, I admit that I glorify busy. I have to get this done or I have to get that done, and I'm always on a time limit. My house needs to be cleaned, dishes need to be washed, clothes need to be laundered, and the countless hours of computer work that I do on top of it all leaves little time for actually enjoying my life. If I regret anything, that would be it.

I love my life, my daughter, my husband, my garden, and my home. We aren't perfect, and we've said many times before that we don't have a lot, but we have each other. This means more to me than anything in the world. This may mean that I have to cut some things out of my life in order to fit the big ones in. I'm okay with that. I don't want to be too tired when I get home that I can't sit down with my daughter and draw a picture or read her a story. I don't want to be too busy when I get home that I can't give my daughter a bath and put her to bed.

As the world gets busier and busier and we go along with that trend in keeping our phones anchored to our side checking everyone else's lives instead of our own, we lose sight of what is really important in our lives. This summer I have connected with new people and reconnected with old friends. I have taken my daughter to the park and to the Farmer's Market. There are still things that I want to do with her. I still want to do yoga with her out on the front lawn, swim in the pool at City Park, go to the zoo, hike a local trail, walk the dogs, go fishing in the lake, and pick raspberries in the mountains.

All this being said, I can also relate this back to teaching, too. An article that I found on LinkedIn also mentions how we must teach our kids about how to wonder and see the world in a different way. As a teacher, I have a great opportunity to be able to do this.

Annie Murphy-Paul writes, "Focus and concentration are essential, of course. But so are introspection and reflection, and Immordino-Yang and her colleagues recommend that adults help children find a balance between the two modes: by regularly unplugging our kids’ blinking, buzzing devices, and by providing time and space for a quieter, more inward kind of entertainment. By making room for wonder in our children's lives, we'll help them develop a more genuine and gratifying definition of success." Read full article here: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140324115341-84796303-making-room-for-wonder-in-children-s-lives

This sort of contradicts what I'm teaching, which is computers; however, there are ways to stop the class and the students and have them introspect and reflect on what they have done or what they are going to do. I've even done this with my daughter when she gets frustrated with a toy. Stop, put it down, and come back to it later. We all need to step away from time to time, and while this may not provide a deep, wondrous experience every time, we often are able to come back to our work with a new sense of experience and perspective. Throughout my career in learning software development, web development, and social media, I have often taken a break and come back to projects with a greater depth of understanding and renewed wonder in the project.

I learned a great deal about education through my studies at Colorado State University, but I've learned even more about education through my own life. I've learned that it takes time to learn a new skill. It takes time to connect and create valuable relationships. It takes time to create. We have to take time for ourselves so that we can bring our best selves to our students, our relationships and our lessons. In my efforts to be optimistic, I believe that this is achievable, and we can change and grow from our experiences.

One tip for today that I hope will make your life easier! I found Canva.com as an alternative to Photoshop. It costs to publish your designs, but it is easier to use and can provide professional graphics at a much lower cost. It's been out for a while, but if you've overlooked it before, you might want to go back and take another look.

Summer Institute 2014 High School Computers

We are finishing the 2014 Summer Institute Course for High School computers, which constituted working on the curriculum for the Game Design 2: Mobile Applications class. We were also able to look at Web Design, Computer Applications, and Game Design I just a bit.

I found quite a few tools that will work really well for the classes I'll be teaching in the fall. I'll even begin to incorporate some of these elements into my college class this summer.


One website is: http://www.gcflearnfree.org/topics
This website has topics on typing and extra practice for students using any of the Microsoft Office Applications. I have quite a few students in my college classes that come in not knowing how to keyboard. This is essential in today's world. Having extra step-by-step lessons on any of the MS Office applications is also helpful.

Photoshop Tutorials: http://entheosweb.com/photoshop/default.asp
I'm teaching Photoshop in the Fall to the Game Design I high school students, but it is not an in-depth course. These are good tutorials to help with backgrounds or sprites for the students' gaming worlds. It is also helpful for anyone who needs to know how to use some of the functionality of Photoshop, but not the whole suite.

Also see: http://tv.adobe.com/
Once again, these are easy tutorials to go through these less in-depth projects that are needed to create some of the objects for Game Design and Mobile Apps.

Mobile Applications Platforms & Tutorials:
MIT App Inventor: http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ - MIT's App Inventor is the easiest of the three that we used to create Mobile Apps. It is similar to Scratch in that it has an interactive GUI that makes it easy to

Live Code: http://livecode.com/ - This was one that was a step above the MIT App Inventor, but it isn't all coding either. We are going to introduce this to the students and allow them to use this as an option for their final projects.

Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com/ - Great tutorials for how to use Python

Learn Python the Hard Way: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book - Good basic tutorials for how to use Python

There's also the resource: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ for web-based development. This is really great to see what is new or up-and-coming!

Maybe some of these will help you in your own education! Good Luck!

19th Week: Goodbyes...

Well, this is my last week at Poudre High School. It's been so nice. I've only come in to teach my Entrepreneurship class in the afternoons. I've spent a little more time here and there trying to get caught up on my grading and making sure that Mr. Long is in the loop on the students in my class.

I had one student this week who was in danger of not graduating because she was failing my class and several others. She turned in a lot of work, and completed her final business plan and turned it in. She passed, but she is still failing some of her other classes. She's a sweet kid, but she has missed a lot of class. She was gone at least half the time. She is smart, and she does good work when she is in class. I hope that she turns things around for herself.

I have a couple of other students in my class who are failing as well. They just don't seem to care. One is sleeping in my class, and the other is playing games. This has been ongoing throughout the semester. Their attitudes have been less than stellar. I've talked with them and told them the consequences of not getting their work in to me by the end of the week, and neither of them seemed to care much. There is one more student who is failing, and the same thing is happening with her at the end of the semester as was happening throughout the semester. She is apathetic and doesn't really care about the class or about learning. Now, all this being said, I've connected with these kids in different ways throughout the semester, but now that the end of the semester is over, it seems as though they have given up. I still have one more day with them next week for finals week.

We took finals this week. Our final was at the beginning of the week with the seniors. Seniors are gone. It seems awfully quiet around here without them. I wish them the best of luck in college and beyond. Graduating high school is such a huge stepping stone, from childhood to adulthood in a matter of weeks it seems. I only hope that as a teacher, I have helped to prepare them for what awaits them in the future.

As I move into this summer and the fall, I plan on continuing this blog, but I'm going to change it a bit. I may post weekly updates, but I will mainly post "lessons learned" and "successes" and "failures" from my lessons. These are the big takeaways that I want to continue to reflect on throughout my career, and the things that I want to share with others. Education is so much about experiences. We learn from each other, and we learn from the world around us. I want to bring that into my classroom as much as possible. I look forward to Rocky Mountain High School being my home even for a little while. Saying goodbye to Poudre High School is bittersweet. I really enjoyed the people that I worked with - especially Mr. Long, but I'm also ready to move on and begin this career that I've been working for the past year.

18th Week: Whew! I made it!

It's not over yet, but I'm feeling the pressure lifted and excited to be almost finished! I have one more week at Poudre High School, and then I start teaching summer school at Front Range Community College. Then, I have Summer Institute for Poudre School District for the job at Rocky Mountain High School. Then, I get to take a break for a while and just teach summer school. I'm so excited about having my summer (life) back. I'm looking forward to spending time with my family and working out and working in the garden. I don't think I'm going to have time to do everything I want to do, but I hope to make a good dent in it all.

Focusing more on the present, though, I had really great classes this week. Everyone worked on their final business plans, and we reviewed for the Final Exam, which will happen on Monday and Tuesday of next week. The final business plans are looking good, and I'm all caught up on my grading. (Grades are turned in at FRCC, by the way.) The Jeopardy game in Entrepreneurship 5th Hour for the review went over very well. I was excited to see so many people engaged.

UPDATE: Rocky Mountain High School

INCOMING UPDATE...

So, six applications, three interviews, and one job offer later... I was offered the job at Rocky Mountain High School! I know that it is only a semester, so I hope that I'm not "shooting" myself in the foot by accepting it. I just really enjoyed the interview, liked the other business teachers there, and looking forward to a good experience. Moving forward, I plan to stay positive and see this as an opportunity for growing my teaching experience. After all, it is another challenge along this crazy journey...

I'm making the arrangements to get paperwork and schedules set up now. It looks like I'll be starting some training in June, and then I have to start back to school in August before the other teachers start.

GO LOBOS!