Hopefully my vlogs will be getting better as time goes on, but h

This is my third post so far and I was looking for something awesome to post but I was pretty busy today with work and puppy sitting.  I still want to post something that is hopefully beneficial for you guys so here is something I got while taking the seminar, Web 2.0 in the Classroom.  Am I the only one that didn't know taking images to use off of google isn't exactly legal?  Weird, well I learned this in the seminar so here is an awesome website to use to get photos instead for anything to use in the classroom.  These photos are posted by the photographers themselves and have given permission for anyone to use them.  You could also use this website for students to look up pictures they may need for a project.  The photos on here are really great, it's cool for just a browse too, the website is called compfight.  I hope this benefits you guys in some way.
Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend with the beautiful weather we're having.
Just in case anyone was wondering, it is very difficult to walk three dogs at one time when one of them is scared of the leash.  Is that even possible for a dog to be scared of a leash?  Weird.  

Blogging has always seemed like something people do who have a lot to talk about and until recently I haven't put myself in that category.  After reading the article Dean Shareski posted to our Ecmp 355 blog, titled Talker's Block  by Seth Godin I have changed my mind.  My favourite quote from this blog/article was, "Write like you talk.  Often."  (Seth Godin, Talker's Block)  I took a creative writing class in high school and this was the exact advice I was given by my high school teacher, our assignment was to keep a journal and write every day.  So, I sort of feel comfort in this blog and I also seem to be taking this blog a bit more serious than the journal I just kept for myself in high school.  I suppose this connects to the class we had earlier in the week; I wrote in my notes that when student work is on the internet for the whole world to see students feel it has a lasting and meaningful effect on them, which I took from Dean Shareski.  This is how I feel, I don't hit the 'publish' button on here until I've looked through my post and made sure I am feeling okay with the post I have just written.  So, if I feel this way about my words that I'm posting to the world to see, students should/hopefully have a similar feeling with their work.  

Also, if you have five and a half minutes to spare, take a look at this video I posted below.  I really encourage you to check it out, you won't be disappointed! 

So, what drove me to start this blog?  Well, I am creating this blog as a part of my Spring class, Ecmp 355.  Why am I taking this class?  I got inspired during the Winter semester to fill my teacher toolbox with technology related things while I attended a seminar at the University called Web 2.0 in the Classroom.  It was probably the most informative seminar I have ever been to and definitely peaked my interest in technology and using it to my students and my advantage, the whole time I was there I was frantically typing on my computer.  I will probably post many of the things I learned there in this blog later throughout the course.  I was so excited for this course that I actually read the Preface to the textbook for this course, titled Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, written by Will Richardson.  In the preface I came across a quote that I felt a connection to, "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)  What I got from this is that students are using technology outside of school but they don't know enough about it connected to real learning, only using it for social networks and to 'look things up', so as a teacher I have to make myself aware of the different ways learning can occur on the internet so I can share that with my students and be successful at doing so.

For this week's tech tasks in the class I am in we were asked to design our blogs so I decided to keep mine bright and fun because I feel that reflects my personality...hopefully you all will agree with me once you get to know me a little bit!  I also love photography...but I can call myself an "attempter" in this category as well, so I added one of my own photos to the top of this blog page and I will probably be posting some of my other photos as well.  Hope you like it!  I also added my twitter to my home page, which I just recently started but I think I'm getting the hang of it, #maybe?  I changed some of the fonts to suite me as well and I'm also keeping everything pretty simple just until I can get a handle on all this blogging stuff.  Expect edits in the future!