First I wanted to give an update on my survey, I have gotten three ansers so far and they have been: Edmodo, facebook and a blog.  I think it's pretty cool to see other people's opinions on what social media tools they would use!  I hope I'll get more answers too!
My post today is inspired by something I heard in the class from Session 4, at the beginning it was discussed that bullying is the biggest problem online for kids.  I wanted to offer an awesome video that I learned about in my arts ed class and then used in my pre-internship in March.  You'll find the video at the bottom of thia post.  After we watch the video with the class, we would split the class into groups (one group for each character in the video) then each group would go to the front of the class and "be" the character they were assigned.  The rest of the class would ask that character questions and any one of the students at the front may answer.  If you have a quiet class it's probably a good idea to have some sample questions that the students can ask.  When I took the class we used the websitde digizen and you should check that out.  They have a bunch of stuff about it. 
Here's the video!  Awesome to show to a class

This week we were asked to create a survey on google docs and then embed it onto our blog and I am super proud of myself that I have actually accomplished this!  I wanted to keep my question relevant to what I have been talking about lately, so I decided to ask about social media in the classroom.  Please answer the survey :) I'd love to find out the results!

So, it's been a little while since I've posted anything on here.  I went to Saskatoon for the weekend to visit a friend, I had an awesome time and I'm so happy I went.  The only thing I wish I would have done is spend an extra $30 and get a better hotel.  My hotel was less that what it showed in the pictures online and were probably from a few years ago.  The 'free wifi' didn't really work anywhere in or around the hotel, so that is why I'm just posting on here now.  So, what I had wanted to post about a couple days ago was an addition to the blog I posted last week about social media in the classroom.  I had said I don't think that facebook is a good idea in the classroom, but I did a little research and looked at one post in particular by Jeff Dunn, called 100 (Updated) Ways to Use Facebook in Your Classroom.  I haven't really changed my mind but I have opened my mind a bit, I think it could be a good idea to just make a different facebook profile, for example I would use Miss Hopfauf instead of mine now.  In this aarticle there are a few things that I really think would be some cool things to use in the classroom are:
- connecting with museums and educational places all over the world
- students can poll the public for assignments using facebook
- facebook book club
- using facebook as a journal entry
- having a class group
- reminding your students of important things coming up
- use facebook for giving homework help
...and tons more!  You should take a look at this post, Jeff Dunn has quickly become my favourite blogger on technology in the classroom. 

I have spent the past hour trying to figure out a way to embed my podcast into this blog but there is no help on the internet to embed a Podomatic podcast into weebly.  Ughh, so I have not given up!  I am going to keep trying...but if anyone has any help for me with this, please please please help!  I will post the link here until I can get this embedded, if there is a way.  I'm sick with a cold right now (my immune system is terrible and I swear I get sick every time a cold comes around), this isn't how I always sound.  So, here is my very first podcast!
Also here are some links to the podcasts I have decided to follow, in case you were interested!  I have explained them a touch in my podcast so if you want to know what they are about take a listen!
1. Ted Talks Education
2.  CBC Saskatchewan
3. Twit iPad Today 
4. iTunes U
I really enjoyed this week's tech task because I kind of didn't know what a podcast was before this week and I have really enjoyed listening to them!

So, I'd like to take this moment to bring up the quote I posted in my first blog again by Will Richardson in his book titled, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.   "A growing majority of students are immersed in social networks and technologies outside of school, and most have no adults in their lives who are teaching them how to use those connections to learn." (Richardson, page ix) I was looking at this quote earlier today and it got me thinking, should we use social media in our classrooms as a tool for learning?  I don't think the traditional social media sites would be appropriate for the classroom but social media is so prominent in the youth today that I think it would be an awesome way to connect.  So are there any other sites that could be used as social media while still keeping it educational and classroom friendly?  I found one, it's called edmodo with this tool you can log on as either a student or a teacher and you can connect with your class by creating a group and sharing the code with your students.  You can also connect with other teachers and you can even get your students to hand in assignments on here.  It's pretty neat!
If anyone else has any other social media tools that they think are good to use, post them in a comment!

Today I found out where I am going to be interning and that I am with grade eight students!  I am so excited, I have an awesome school, amazing age group and a principal I know from when I was an elementary student!  This is really exciting and also makes me pretty nervous, now I'm so much closer to being an actual teacher!  So, I thought I would use this blog post to remind myself and give you all a few tips that I got from a Life as an Intern seminar I attended:
1. Teaching is like water - it takes the space you give it.
2. Don't load yourself up too quickly in internship, give yourself some time to grasp the situation in internship.
3. Know your limits because internship should not consume your whole life.
4. If you expect more from your students they will give you more.
5. Adapt rather than adopt - take resources but make them fit your classroom.
6. Have extras on hand, just in case an activity doesn't take as long as you assumed.
7. Your coop is not there to hold your hand on a tight rope, they are there to be your net in case you fall.  Be your own teacher.
8. There is a curriculum outside of school that students' parents, sports, etc. are trying to teach them too so be wary of that when assigning homework, what can they handle?
9. Learn as much as you can over the summer about the subjects you will be teaching, time will fly in internship.
10. Nurture the relationships you create the people you meet in internship will be vital to your career following.

These 10 tips I got from three awesome teachers that took their time to come give advice to us for a seminar.  I hope this helps some of you!  I found it very helpful.

Also, I'm sure everyone knows I'm not the best at twitter so I've been trying to grow in that area.  This article was very helpful for me, titled 100 Ways to Use Twitter in Education by Jeff Dunn.  Take a look, it's pretty good!

So, this may seem weird but the tech task I had the most trouble with this week was participating in an educational chat on twitter.  That's why I have left it until last and why it's happening late on a Sunday evening, I've been watching YouTube tutorials and reading different blogs on how to do this.  I think I have actually got the hang of it now, I've been trying to figure this out all week and maybe I'm still a touch confused (so if you have any tips for me or a how to, please share!) and I haven't got to participate in a live chat, that's my personal goal for this week coming up.  But I did check out the #midleved which is a chat specifically for middle years teachers and students which was pretty awesome!  I used the website, Tweetchat, this website made the chat way easier than just using twitter.  If you haven't looked at this website for participating in chats on twitter you should check it out!  When I participated in this chat, I posted a video (the same video I posted earlier in this blog about 21st Century Education) and I had to use the bitly website to shorten my url to fit into the twitter message box, which was also new for me!
Also, look what I found when I took a browsey on the #midleved chat...if any of you have iPads, this is a pretty cool picture.  Even if you don't have an iPad these are things you can just use a computer for!  I found it in an article written by Jeff Dunn.  Jeff is totally someone worth checking out, he has tons of great stuff about technology.

Today the top thing on my to do list was to find other bloggers to follow, so here is the list I have come up with so far:
1. Jeff Utecht created a blog called 'The Thinking Stick' where he talks about technology and I found that he updates it very often.  I think that this blog is going to be an asset to me in this course.
2. Steven writes a blog called 'Library Stuff', I was interested in this blog because I really like getting new resources and finding new books to use in my classroom, when I get one.
3. Troy Hicks writes a blog about teaching called, 'Digital Writing, Digital Teaching' and from what I have read it is very interesting so far.  There is lots about technology and lots of other stuff to do with teaching!
4. Alexander Russo created a blog called 'This Week in Education' which is all about recent happenings in the world of education.  I'm really excited about this one because I really want to know more about whats going on.
5. Joe Brower is the author is the blog titled, 'For the Love of Learning' which was a blog I was told to read months ago and I just never got around to it, so I'm using this opportunity to read it now!
6. Megan Ginther-Strohhaecker mentioned on her blog Stump the Teacher by Josh Stumpenhorst, there is a slight humour in it that I enjoy.  So thanks Megan for the awesome blog to follow!

So these are the blogs that I'm following at the moment but I'm sure reading all of my classmates blogs on who they are following and twitter will definitely give me more to follow!

I read the post that Dean Shareski posted onto the class blog a few moments ago and I thought it was an interesting read.  Sometimes people use 'interesting' as a synonym for 'bad' but that's not how I'm using it in this case.  I genuinly found it interesting.  Many of the courses I took in my third year seemed to take on this view, one in particular was Dave Gray's class...or at least in my opinion it was.  The post is titled "Why we work together - learning as cheating" by Dave Cormier.  In my third year I learned a lot about PLCs (Professional Learning Communitites) which I think is what this post is about, having people there to help you and learning from the people around you.  We are all pretty close in the middle years section and we got help from each other the entire year and definitely learned a ton from each other.  This is something that I hope I can find at whatever school I get a job at, which shouldn't be hard...us teachers are pretty helpful :) 
I really agree with what Dave said in this piece. "I could have given you a step by step process for doing that…and we would have finished faster. But i don’t consider actually just ‘getting the job done’ to be the same thing as understanding."  (Dave Cormier) when he was talking about giving the assignment of starting a new blog.  Similar to this class, we weren't given a lot of direction but I really felt that I actually learned how to set up a blog.  I looked this up on google and found tutorials on YouTube that was really helpful and I learned what I wanted to.  If I feel I don't want something in my blog I won't really look to find how to get it in but when I wanted to put in a twitter button I learned how.  I think this is an awesome way to learn because I feel like I am retaining everything whereas if I was forced to do something or do it a certain way I would just figure out how to do it but probably not remember anything.

Today I spent some time looking at #comments4kids on twitter and found one students' blog that had no comments on it.  I know how awesome it is to go onto your blog to see that you have comments on your post so I thought that student would benefit from a comment.  #comments4kids is a pretty awesome thing on twitter, I think it is going to help a lot of students.  Many of the blogs I came across today said things like they only welcomed positive or helpful comments.  I think that's very helpful for the students creating these blogs, this acts like an awesome learning project for them.  This is definitely something I would be interested in doing with my own students when I get a classroom!