My blog!

I often find in the fall that I need more time. There are so many things from which to choose:  since I cannot decide which ones to do, I tend to do all of them.   This makes me very busy.  I also have to take homework into account.  When I know I only have a short window of time for homework , I focus on it more. That is one advantage.  Between cross-country running after school until 4:00 , my Beauty and the Beast rehearsal until 5:00, and rehearsing for another play that I am in, Once Upon a Mattress a version of the Princess and the Pea, from 7:00 to 9:00, I do not have much remaining time.  Somehow I always manage to finish my homework. I  will admit that I would like  a little extra time- for relaxing by reading a book or blogging (that would be why my posts have been infrequent lately)but I suppose I will just have to wait until my current schedule settles down. Wait- that would be when basketball starts and when I  am auditioning for another play. I will also have jazz band on Tuesday afternoons, and math team (if I decide to do it) on  Mondays after school. So I suppose I will never stop being busy. Good thing next weekend in the US the clocks are being set back- I’ll gain an extra hour (of sleep)!!!!

Are you busy?

Do you find yourself ever needing/wanting more time?

I have heard the term wikis mentioned before on numerous blogs. I never really knew what they were, though, until a couple of weeks ago. In my English Language Arts class my teacher has a wiki and we have a weekly assignment to complete on our individual pages. My teacher checks it every Friday to make sure that her students are actually  reading as assigned (which is not a concern for me, I read a lot). I probably go on my wiki page daily to update the books that I am reading outside of school. Now that wikis are unveiled to me I have realized that they are awesome! Fun and educational……..

Have you ever used a wiki?

Merci beaucoup!

Thank you so much Ms. Waters! It is a wonderful honor to have been selected as one of the winners of the Edublogger Competition! Congratulations to all the winners!!!!

Je suis tres heureux parce que j’ai eu 1000 visiteurs  sur mon blog!

Thank you so much to all the wonderful bloggers that have visited/commented on my blog! As of yesterday(as my Clustr map says) I have reached 1000 visitors!!!!!!

Hooray!!

……………………………Lumiere. Je suis triste parce que je voulais Belle, mais j’irai essayer être bonne à Lumiere.

Life is about disappointments and rising above them. After all no one gets everything that they want. Sometimes you simply just have to make the most of what you are dealt, which I will try to do. My goal is to be the best Lumiere there ever was!

For those who are completely lost about this post, here is the explanation: my middle school is putting on the Disney musical Beauty and the Beast. Today the cast list was posted. I was cast as Lumière . For those who are not familiar with the story or Disney movie, Lumiere is the talking candlestick pictured in the photo below with the talking clock, Cogsworth. Yes, that’s me.

Have you ever participated in any school plays?

Have you ever had a disappointment from which you have recovered?

Have you ever been a candlestick?

This is my attempt on Sue Water’s  ”Share your tips and win big!” challenge on her blog: The Edublogger. I decided to post about “5 important tips for educators who are starting out blogging with their students” thinking  I would have an interesting perspective- being a student myself.

What are your 5 most important tips for educators starting out blogging with students?

1. Be prepared. Know what your students are allowed to do on their blogs and what they are not. Find out how everything works (e.g. using HTML codes for widgets) so your students will be able to come to you for help. Find cool blogs from all around the world: because being a student I know that I love more than anything to have red dots popping up on my Clustr map.  Having lists of blogs prepared will make it easier for students to find blogs that they would want to comment on.

2. The  teacher should have a blog of their own. It is good to have a model blog: to give the students some ideas of their own and to demonstrate ways to improve their blogs.  Also having the educator create a blog of their own enables the teacher to familiarize with using edublogs:  so when it comes time for them to help their students it will not be new and foreign to them too.  It is fun for students to talk with their teacher via blogging and could turn out to be rewarding- academically wise: my French teacher gives students extra credit if they post thoughtful comments on her blog (even though most do not have blogs of their own) and it could be academic incentive  for some kids. Maybe reluctant at first students might just comment just to help their grade and end up  more interested in blogging!

3.  If you assign posts as  homework or class work do not make them too demanding. You do not want your students to have a fear of blogging because they know they have to write particular posts. Let them have some opinion in what they are posting about. Make them feel like they can be creative: they can post about a subject that fascinates or is important to them. You want your students to like blogging- when you enjoy something you always do better at it.  You want to keep blogging interesting: not something that your students will fear. Maybe give them an idea or subject that the particular post has to be about but then let them come up with the specifics. You do always want to enforce standard writing conventions: since a blog is a very public outlet and so many people view it, proper spelling,

4. Keep your blog current; post consistently…perhaps one every week.  You do not want too much time to lapse between posts- as an avid commenter it always disappoints me when I return to a blog that I like and there are not recent posts.  Having ongoing posts will keep readers interested and make new visitors to your blog come back.  Encourage your students to keep their blogs up to date with new posts regularly.

5. The way you present blogging needs to be fun. Blogging is fun on its own but if there is no free time to play around with the appearance of their blogs students could begin to dread blogging.  By having a healthy mix of fun and school-work blogging is perfect for the classroom. Your students should have some time to play with  blog themes, and widgets. As a teacher you should find out in advance some popular widget sites so you can tell your students about them and they can look at the websites if interested. Your students  could even find some different widgets than the ones you listed and then you can turn it into a learning opportunity: the student can tell the class about the widget that they found. As they say it is good to stay with the times, so when technology updates be sure to find the newest and coolest widgets! Another important aspect of blog appearance is the blog theme. After all who wants the drab default theme that come with your blog? Students should be allowed some  time to look at all the different blog themes. Some blog themes even allow you to put a photo in the header (for example: Mrs. Beal’s blog). There are so many ways you can personalize your blog through blog themes and widgets and truly make it one of a kind!

Well, I signed up for Miss Wyatt’s 2009 blogging challenge. I signed up for the one last Spring and it was lots of fun!! For Activity 2 under Miss Wyatt’s Welcome!Welcome!Welcome! challenge there are some questions to post about: I signed up for the one last Spring and it was lots of fun!!

1. Why did I sign up for the blogging challenge?

There are a couple of reasons I signed up for the blogging challenge. My first and ultimate reason is that I gain more knowledge about blogging out of it. It is wonderful to learn tips to  improve my blog from phenomenal bloggers like Miss Wyatt and Sue Waters through their posts. Blogging challenges are really instrumental in the development of my blog. My second reason for signing up for the blogging challenges because it helps connect you to a global audience. Having my name and blog link on the participants page is awesome since so many people visit Miss Wyatt’s blog. My third reason for joining the blogging challenge is that it is just plain fun!

2. Do I want to take part in the commenting section more than the better blogger section? Why?

I think I would like to take part in both of the sections if possible. I would love to develope my commenting abilities more (with the Better Commenter section) and I would still love to improve my blog and continue to connect to a global audience (with the Better Blogger section). These two sections will be wonderful and combined they will definitely enhance my blogging.

3.What do you hope some of the activities include?

I am not really sure what I hope some of the activities include. Anything that Miss Wyatt posts to do will be fun in my opinion. I would like to do so activites telling about things you like to do and ways that blogging has helped you. I think those would be interesting posts.

4.Finally, What do I hope to get out of the challenge by the end of the ten weeks?

I would love to have more visitors to my blog because of the challenge. I love to visit people’s blogs and comment and I also love to recieve comments back! I would also like to gain lots of knowledge about blogging, anything that I can do to make my blog better.

Are you participating in this challenge?

Have you ever participated in any of the blogging challenges?

After ten or so wonderful weeks of summer it is finally time for me to go back to school: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! Where did the summer go? I am sort of excited though to meet my new teachers, and very excited to have French class again: I cannot wait to learn more French! I am also excited for my school’s musical this Fall, we are doing Beauty and the Beast! I also am excited for sports to begin!

When do you go back to school?

Or, when did you go back to school?

I am very excited for I have never been to Ireland before and I have heard many great things about it. I will be visiting some relatives (some of whom  have visited this blog and one who has posted!) in the Dublin area and County Cork. I am excited because in the ten days I am there I will visit castles, ancient burial sites, Dublin, various little towns and hopefully go horsebackriding. I am going to practice the little bit of Gaelic I know and hopefully learn some more and my relative Doreen speaks French so I shall have opportunities to speak en francais with her. As soon as I get back I shall make a post about mon voyage and maybe I shall post some photos.

If you wonder why your comments do not get approved during this ten-day time period or there is a lack of response to your comment, do not fear, it is NOT because I am ignoring you, it is because I have not been able to access a computer. That should not stop anyone from commenting though: an email inbox full of comments-to-be-approved would make me very happy when I come home! I will try my best to get online once or twice while I am there though.

Have you ever been to Ireland?

Are you Irish in anyway?

What nationalities are you?

One of my close friends gave me the third book in a series that both of us enjoy (for my birthday). I had finished Don’t Judge A Girl By Her Cover by that night, so wrapped up in it that I was. This was the latest installment in the Gallagher Girls Series ( I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have To Kill You, Cross My Heart And Hope To Spy, and Don’t Judge A Girl By Her Cover) by Ally Carter.

I shall give you the basic information, starting with the first book: I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have To Kill You.

Cameron Morgan (a.k.a Cammie the Chameleon) is a 15-year-old student (and daughter of the headmistress) at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women. Or a school of rich, snobby girls as the locals from Roseville, Virginia (and the rest of the world) perceive it as. Which is fine: after all every good spy knows not to blow their cover. Cammie can kill a person in seven different ways, she speaks 14 languages,  and goes to a school for spies-in-training. What could be better? To get in to the Gallagher Academy (which by the way you need at least a Level 4 Clearance too even know about) you have to be either a daughter of elite spies working for the government or a genius. Cammie and her friends Liz (a genius) and Bex (daughter of famous British spies) attend classes such as CoveOps (short for covert operations where your class could be tracking one of the teachers, attending a political rally and secretly tapping into the Secret Service frequency, or escaping from a situation where your teachers pretend to be the bad guys), Countries of the World, Culture and Assimilation…..not your normal classes and not your normal students. So what happens when Cammie fall in love with a boy, who isn’t a spy?

Hopefully you will be interested by this post and find a copy at the local library or bookseller and then you will go on to read the rest in the series.

Have you ever read any of these books?

If so, what were your feelings about them?