Someone thinks its cool to set their car on panic and it's driving me nuts!

But anyway. Yesterday in class we talked mostly about our webinars, which I had completely forgotten about. I thought the screen cast website was WAY COOL and I'm excited to do that, hah. I also think everyone things I'm crazy for asking if we can do it on our own instead of with a partner- I only asked because it said "you can work with a partner" versus "you and a partner will.." and I know how busy everyone's schedule is so I thought it might make life simpler to not have to worry about when two people can find the time to get together!! I don't necessarily WANT to work on it by myself, either. I'm thinking of some sort of stock simulation game or something as the web 2.0 tool (if that counts?) Since I know that is something interesting for students to do instead of just learning what stocks are, they can be involved in buying/trading them, etc. Still not sure yet, I know theres a lot of things like that though. I'd like to do something I could incorporate into my curriculum someday, but I'm not sure how many economics-related things there are. I did some searching and found one site that looked like it could be interesting. I'm sure there's more out there, I need to do some more digging. Oh, but my point was maybe chris and I could team up and do an econ-related thing. Or anyone else for that matter.

Then we talked about what surprising tech "things" we have found at our placements- a lot of people seemed frustrated about the lack of help available or the lack of willingness to use the resources. This is obviously a recurring trend; I think once we've been teaching for a while we'll notice a change, as old teachers who are set in their ways retire and more young, tech-savvy people like us move in =)

I recently started getting more involved in the class at my placement; my mentor had to leave before the end of the day so I ran the show during 5th period. It was interesting but overall I think it went well! I hate the way my voice sounds on the video camera. I also noticed that my voice/tone is more boring that it sounds to me in my head, so that is something I want to work on. I had a lot of fun though and so far I'm loving it!!

1st week of school & cell phone seminar

This week started my placement at Romulus. Its a very interesting group of students, and I anticipate it to be really challenging and rewarding. I'm a bit intimidated but I know I'll get over it once I get up there a couple times.... but its those first few times I'm worried about!

I went to the workshop about using cell phones with your teaching, and there were a bunch of interesting resources. I'll have to look into Romulus's policy- I know in general they don't allow phones to be seen, but I'm not sure how willing they'd be to let me incorporate them into a lesson. But we also learned about a bunch of activities that could also be an out of school assignment. I'm still not too sure how I feel about using cell phones as a learning tool- there certainly are a lot of options but as always there are a lot of potential distractions. Another thing I noticed is that alot of the resources require you to create an account & the process of using them is sometimes complex. I'm concerned that it might take longer to explain the tool & instructions & get everyone comfortable with knowing how to do the assignment/project than it would actually be worth. But who knows, I guess that's something I'll figure out from experience. Like I said before, preparation is definitely going to be critical to the success of these sorts of things.

I still have a bunch of questions about what I'm supposed to teach and when, for my student teaching, but they'll get answered in time. I'm sure I'm worrying way more than I need to but I can already tell which students are going to be the most challenging and not having any teaching experience I feel like I'm not going to be able to able to do it. Ok thats enough of that...

Nese- if you read this, I'd be interested in coming to your school to observe you! I've got to go to a couple different schools and see various teachers, which I agree will be so good, but I have no idea how or when all this is going to happen, haha.