Final Project Idea.

For my final project I'm going to learn the mind mapping tools MindMeister.com. I remember hearing about the different mind mapping tools in class and thinking how interesting and hopefully useful it would be to learn how to do those!
I love how relevant technology is to students and how engaged it can get them into the work they do. I think this will be a good tool to use with them and for them :)

I put it on Youtube

And here's the
Youtube Link
to my video.

An Interview Project

I think this is a good way for students to have fun with a project and to explore the themes of whatever they're reading. And I like that it's something that they can involve their peers and family in on to see the views of others, not just themselves. It was fun and easy to make and fun to hear the responses of others.

Cool Website Helps to Incorporate Media

Teachwithmovies.org is a website dedicated to lesson plans and learning guides based on full movies and movie clips. It does cost money to join the website to gain access to all of the ideas presented, but what a cool idea! Sometimes movie clips help enhance the lesson, like we talked about in class, and having this website full of ideas would be so helpful.

I think this would be really helpful if you knew you wanted to incorporate a clip of something to keep the lesson exciting, but you had a hard time thinking of how to tie it in. The website could give you ideas so that you're not just playing a movie just because.

My Storyboard

I've decided to do my video project as a project I would give to my students where they go and interview their friends and family about the topics we are learning/discussing in class about a certain book.

Here is my Storyboard

English Teaching Blog

I don't know if you guys have seen this blog, but it's just of English Teachers at BYU.

BYU English Blog

It's for English teaching majors at BYU to post about anything they want. Lesson plans, good ideas, questions, comments....anything. I subscribed to it and I think anyone is welcome to join in and start posting. It's interesting. Take a look around :)

Internet Safety

I read Bednar's talk "Things As They Really Are"
I loved it.
I love that it drew attention to how important our bodies were. It was an interesting way to talk about the internet, I had never considered it being a tool to forget our physical existence before. Our bodies are a gift from God. A gift. We need to realize the importance of them and not miss out on using them. We can't idle away our time forgetting we exist...

I taught my friends who have a little baby.
They use the internet regularly but did not know much about keeping their child safe once he is old enough to use the internet. They have never really encountered cyber bullying so it was never something they thought about. I watched a video on cyber bullying and read tips to keep your child safe from NetSmartz.org. I taught them the tips that I learned. Some of the important things I taught from those tips are:
-Do not respond to the rude or harassing emails or messages
-Delete an email account that is being harassed and get a new one only for those you trust.
-And most importantly, don't forget about the local authorities and your Internet Service Provider to get things removed like bullying websites.
I think after giving these tips, they moved more into the paranoid side of the spectrum and asked questions like, "Well, how do I make sure they're not responding!?"
I told them the best thing they can do is teach correct principles and have faith that their babies will govern themselves (just like Joseph Smith taught).
They calmed down some after that but still felt afraid of letting their child on the internet at all.

In the end, they decided to send their baby to Narnia where the internet is much safer.
But, hopefully they learned something if their child eventually does use the internet. I gave them NetSmartz.org as a resource for them to find out more.