Hello December!!!

How is it December 1st already?  This year just flew by!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I know I did and I certainly had a good Black Friday, aka spending too much money on clothes!

Last week one of my best friends had her baby boy.  I finally got to meet him this past weekend (he had to stay in the NICU for a week), and he is so adorable.  Here is a picture of him she sent all of us!

He is certainly one happy baby!

I look forward to seeing everyone Wednesday for dinner and our last class meeting!  It's been one crazy semester, but we all made it!

The Party is OVER...

and a complete success!

So this past week has been absolutely crazy!!!  My dad was still in the hospital with the doctors trying to find out what was wrong with him.  It seems he got a hospital born infection that they have no idea where it is in his body so he is on 6 weeks of IV antibiotics.  He was finally able to come home on Wednesday, which is why I had to miss class because I had to pick him up, but I'm loving all the great tool times on the archive!  These are certainly tools I can use in the classroom, or just in my life in general.  Thanks everyone for the great tools and for all the prayers for my dad!

The party was a great success!  Everyone told me it was a great time and that I totally outdid myself (which I know I did...especially since I have been actively planning this party for 2.5 years!!!).  I have a few pictures now, and my old college roommate took a ton of pictures because she's a photographer.  When she gets those to me, I'll make sure I share them.  I hope it should be soon because I really want to see them.  I totally didn't take any because I was so busy the whole night playing hostess with the mostess, but some friends have sent me a few!

Here are the centerpieces that were around on tables:

Here is the birthday boy looking mad that we were singing happy birthday to him.  He hates that kind of thing.  You can see the special shirt I got made for him.  It says Cheers and Beers to my 30 years!  And you can see my beer bottle cupcake cake:

And the last picture I have is of myself and 2 of my friends with my awesome beer six pack collage behind us that fell off the wall :-(.  You can kind of see the earrings and necklace my friend on the left made for us out of beer bottle caps!

So that's all I have for now.  Like I said, when I get the others I will make sure they get put up here because there was a lot of stuff that I made and did for this party that I want to show off! 

The Last Part of the Contract!

So this week I finished up my last bits of my personal contract, and essentially finishing up my remaining duties for 5001 (minus the last few blog posts of comments left for the semester)!!  I taught the undergrads how to use Smartboards and how to effectively use clickers in the classroom.  I had a good time with those students.  It's great to see how far they have come since I first met them, and I think they really enjoyed my lesson to them.  I hope they can use everything in the future!

Sad news, my dad was re-admitted to the hospital (on his birthday of all days!) because of a fever and what they are calling muscle spasms.  We now know he has a hospital born infection and they are treating with the IV antibiotics.  He was supposed to be released tomorrow, but that may be changing if they can't get his fevers under control.  I know a lot of you have been asking for an update, so here it is!  Please keep him in your prayers....he is miserable at the hospital and really wants to be home!

Other than that...it has been full blown party planning and prepping in my house.  My husband's birthday is Saturday and we've got like 60 people coming to the party!  Now I have to figure out how much food to make :-/  Here is a look at some more things I've made for the party....don't worry, my old college roommate is going to be taking pictures so I will share some with all of you!  I really hope everything comes together!!!!

Getting Closer

We have survived the first full week of November and it wasn't too bad!  It was a relatively easy week due to the teacher's convention, which I wish I had gone, and the lack of class.  I used the time to get some IDD work done, as well as work on some more crafts for my husband's 30th (2 weeks away...only half of the people have RSVP'ed, and I have a lot more to do!).  I finished making my own version of these beer bottle candles I saw on Etsy and I love them.  I think since I have extra wax leftover, they may be gifts for people, especially my friends who really like beer!

I also finished making a towel that has a beer mug on it.  Here it is:

I think it came out pretty nice!  Ok, I'm off to go do some work!  Until next week!

Hello November!

Well the week is over, and boy was it a long one!  It started with my dad's surgery, which went really well and he was actually discharged today.  He is home and resting and is much more comfortable than he was in the hospital.  We are all glad everything went well and thankful for all the prayers!

The week ended with subbing, halloween at our friends' house after we went through 2.5 bags of candy for trick-or-treaters, watching the U.S. vs. New Zealand rugby match with my husband's rugby team, and finished with bringing my dad home.

This week we also got to meet Steve Rao who made me realize that I could program apps, especially since I've programmed other things in the past.  It was also nice to learn about code.org and their hour of code.  It really is something I know a lot of people would have loved when they were younger.  I showed it to my husband, and he spent an hour on the website just looking through everything.

Well...I'm glad this long week is over, that everything worked out well, and that I got to have a little fun in the process.  Here we go into November (when did that happen!?!) and towards the end of the semester (which will be here before we all know it!).

This was my easy week!

Welp, this was my easy week.  I was finally caught up or right where I needed to be for all of my classes!  And I got this week's IDD assignment write the first time around, woohoo!  Dana and I presented our IT History, which we seemed to get a lot of good feedback, and we introduced people to some new web 2.0 tools and I hope they enjoy using them as much as we did!

I created my PLN after discussed exactly what it was...and I got use Symbaloo to do it.  Forgot how great Symbaloo is.  It's been about a year since I have used it and it's crazy how many more important sites and great resources I have now that a year has gone by.  It's all those unconferences and pinteresting I do!

This weekend and leading into next week will be busy busy!  One of my best friends in getting married, and I'm in it!  We have the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner tonight and tomorrow is the wedding!  Wedding 5 of 6 attended this year is about to happen and it's wedding 3 or 3 I am in!  Whew, this was a busy year!

Monday my dad goes in for open heart surgery, so I'll be in Philly till Wednesday for him.  Keep him in your prayers!

Well I'm off to get some stuff done before tonight!  Hope you all have a great weekend and I'm excited about our guest speaker on Wednesday!

Finally getting a grasp on things!

So this week I finally felt like I was getting ahead of myself and able to catch my breath for the first time this whole semester...and it was just in time too!  This weekend was homecoming at UD and it was an awesome time to see some of my friends from college who I haven't seen in a year.  It was a lot of fun too!

With us having off this week, that meant that we had our IDD meeting, which again, eased my mine a bit and made me realize that we're moving to the easier part of the class (and the more straight forward part too).  I'm happy about this and happy to be getting to the more creative part of making the program!

When I was on Pinterest, I happened to see a pin from Richard Byrne that was about using an interactive program for the Constitution, which I think is really cool.  It would also be really useful in the US 1 classes I've been subbing in because they are all on this topic now.  It helps take topics today and explain them using the Constitution.  Pretty cool to me!

We're halfway done!

This week, like the others, was extremely busy!  Between classes, subbing, and working on the IDD project and IT History project, this week just didn't seem to end.  Well it finally did, and here we are moving into the next week.  8 weeks including this week left!  Woohoo!

The presentations this week were really good and very informative.  I learned a lot about both topics and I learned about a new web 2.0 tools to make timelines.  Tool time was also really helpful to advertise about ourselves and is a great addition to our portfolios.

We've been busy working with weebly to get it look perfect for our project.  While I find it extremely user friendly and WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get).  There are a few limitations to it we are finding (free accounts only get 5 pages) and sometimes moving things is not the easiest thing, but overall I think we're happy with how the website is shaping up and I'm excited to have used another website making page.

Alrighty, I leave you all to get back to work on my IDD project, and to maybe get some stuff done for my husband's 30th birthday party next month (it's a big beer tasting party!!!).

10 Weeks to Go...

But who's counting?  I know I am!  I am beginning to think taking on two graduate classes, especially two core courses is quite a bit of work.  I knew that going in, but it's finally starting to settle in.  This was my week to have a stress meltdown, but after I had it, I felt better and I feel like I'm finally starting to get a handle on everything I need to for IDD.

I really applaud Kellee, Elizabeth, and Faiza for being the first to go for their IT History project and it made me look at the chalkboard in a whole new light!  And gave me a few ideas for our project, which is the last to be presented!

I said this as my Ah-Ha, but it was so awesome to see plickers in action.  I thought it was the coolest idea when I heard about this summer, and I totally want to give it a try!  Really makes a new idea for clickers!  Thanks Elsann!

Well I leave you all now...time to prepare for Yom Kippur

A Busy Week...

So last week was uneventful and this week was busy!  Started off with subbing, finished with the Jewish New Year, and had some IT History and IDD work in the middle!

The IDD meeting was actually good because it helped clear up some confusions I had on how to do the analysis portion we are working on next.  I'm glad we had that meeting and had a chance to meet others in the class.  That's what I miss most about online classes.

We worked on our IT History project and got to learn about a great timeline tool, Capzles.  I'm going to use it for my Time Capsule project as well, and I love it!  It's a great 2.0 tool with lots of ways to customize the information put on!  I'm excited to see the first group go on Wednesday and to also to do my tool time!

Other than that, we got a new TV...fancy 4K, Ultra HD.  It's pretty nice!

An uneventful week!

So this week we had no class, but I used the time to meet with Dana so we could work on our IT history project.  We started working on the timeline and organizing all our plan and materials to begin the project.  I'm excited to do this and present on the topic we chose!

Also spent the week working on our Needs and Goals statement for IDD, all while subbing for the first time this year.  That was great and I loved getting back into the classroom and with the department that I student taught with!  Missed some of my students too and it was great to see them.

Overall, this was a pretty boring week in my life, and not much happened.  The coming weeks will be more exciting.  Wow, can't believe that September is almost over...it just flew by!

Here is a link to the NJAET conference.  I wasn't able to go last year, and this year I too am not able to go (last of 3 weddings I'm in this year!), but I have heard it is a great conference to attend, and has a wealth of knowledge to gain from it.

And We're Rollin' Along...

So the first full week of classes are done, it's starting to feel like fall, and the sun is setting earlier.  It's almost officially fall, which is sad because that means summer is over.  I was so busy, I feel like I didn't get to enjoy it much (lots of weddings do that to ya!).

This week in class I got to work with Kahoot for Monica's Tool Time presentation.  Since it was my first time using this Personal Response System (I have used polleverywhere, Socrative, Smart Tools clicker program, etc.), it was nice to see something a bit more graphic.  While, it probably is a bit too juvenile for high schoolers or business workers, it is still a great website that allows formative assessment in real time.  I'm really glad I get to add another PRS to the list I have used, and I'm going to keep it in my back pocket!

I also had the opportunity to work with the undergrads taking their technology class.  It was nice to meet a lot of them and get to help them out.  I know for them, this is all very overwhelming, but I think being able to talk with me and listen to someone who has been there and come out the other side, calmed their nerves a bit.  I'm excited to get to teach them about Smartboards and Clickers/PRS.  I think they're going to really enjoy those technologies because they were two favorite after taking that same class with Dr. Harvey!

Speaking of Dr. Harvey...IDD has begun!  We're working on our problem statements, and while I was told I have good one, some students have suggested being more specific on mine.  Yes, there are parts that could be more specific, but I'm still unsure how specific we should be on them.  I guess I'll figure it all out when I post my final draft tomorrow!

Well that was this week...I'm going to leave you with a website I found when I was googling for timeline creators for our IT history project.  It seems to have a lot of articles on it for Instructional Technology, so I thought others would be interested!

I leave you to get ready to help my baby brother shop for engagement rings!  He's finally gonna propose to his girlfriend...we're all pretty excited!

First Grad Class: Completed!

So I successfully survived my first grad class, and left not feeling completely overwhelmed like I would with some undergrad classes.  I am a little worried about taking two graduate classes during my first semester, especially with one of those being Instructional Development and Design, but I figure if I organize my time wisely, I'll be ok!

I'm excited to being my masters program and to continue learning about Instructional Technology.  I had blast doing some of it undergrad when I got my teaching certificate, so I think I will continue to learn and enjoy the content!

Please excuse that my blog is a bit unfinished/updated.  I recently decided to add a bunch of my teaching portfolio to it because of an idea I saw at TEACHmeetNJ where another classmate made her blog into something that employers could look at.  So I am currently in the midst of posting all of that!  Slowly but surely, it will all be there!

During my daily facebook stalking I noticed a friend had liked lynda.com.  I remembered them from back when I did my first degree and people were using them to supplement the information myself and the other TA gave about Avid (a video editing program...I prefer Final Cut now).  However, I went over to the website and they now have a whole section about education, especially some things on design and development.  Thought it might come in handy for those of us taking IDD this semester.  Take a look!

Alrighty, I'm off to get ready for one of my best friends' baby shower!  See you all on Wednesday!