Samantha’s Blog

Coming from a Catholic school I have been exposed to millions of short stories that have so many different meanings…. Today, when my friend was telling me about a hard time she was going through she told me how she feels like her heart has a huge hole in it right now. This made me think of one of those stories I had to read back in highschool, and really its amazing how much school has affected me and i remember things like this… so I got on google and tried to find this story, and I found it in minutes and i was so glad…
The Most Beautiful Heart – Author Unknown.
(its short so im just going to post it right into my post, its a good one to read)

One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley.

A large crowd gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was not a mark or a flaw in it. Yes, they all agreed it truly was the most beautiful heart they had ever seen. The young man was very proud and boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart.

Suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, “Why your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine.” The crowd and the young man looked at the old man’s heart. It was beating strongly, but full of scars, it had places where pieces had been removed and other pieces put in, but they didn’t fit quite right and there were several jagged edges. In fact, in some places there were deep gouges where whole pieces were missing.

The people stared ­ “How can he say his heart is more beautiful?” they thought.

The young man looked at the old man’s heart and saw its state and laughed. “You must be joking,” he said. “Compare your heart with mine, mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears.”

“Yes,” said the old man, “Yours is perfect looking but I would never trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom have given my love – I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place in my heart, but because the pieces aren’t exact, I have some rough edges, which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared.”

“Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away, and the other person hasn’t returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty gouges – giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful, they stay open, reminding me of the love I have for these people too, and I hope someday they may return and fill the space I have waiting. So now do you see what true beauty is?”

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks.

He walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with trembling hands. The old man took his offering, placed it in his heart and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it in the wound in the young man’s heart. It fit, but not perfectly, as there were some jagged edges.

The young man looked at his heart, not perfect anymore but more beautiful than ever, since love from the old man’s heart flowed into his.

They embraced and walked away side by side.

I absolutey love this story, there is so much to take out of it. The more love you give to others, the more beautiful of a person you are. And even when things end badly, the love is still there… Love affects people in many different ways. I want to live my life making the most influence on other people as I can.

So i guess i haven’t wrote a blog since ECMP 355 ended, and i decided, hey why not write a blog! 

First of all i want to say, ECMP 355 totally made me meet some many people.  Even though our class was small, the few people I did meet are the people i see the most each day at other classes, and I know them because of that class! Like Alanna, who still helps me with math!

So i was sitting in art class with Joelene and Kristine (haha i told you guys i would do that haha) and i watched a really bad presentation. Not to be mean or anything, but i realized how important it is to be prepared because really, your presentation could be the most interesting thing in the world but you suck at doing it so then no one stays interested! So this presentation was about Evan Penny, a Canadian artist who does hyper realism sculptures. It was really cool, because really you wouldnt be able to tell that it was a statue, that is how life like they are! The things people can create just amaze me! Then! i was on the internet just looking at everything because i have nothing better to do i guess, and i found an artist that uses photoshop to turn cartoon characters into what they would look like if they were real! i was so amazed! the artist, pixeloo has done mario brothers, homer simpson, stewie griffen and, how i found this blog, jessica rabbit.  It is a pretty cool thing how the person made it, using pictures from angelina jolie!  I watched a video on youtube about how it was done!

Ok something else i want to talk about, the library. I honestly had no idea how to use the library at school. Once i went and helped Alanna find a poetry book, but today I had to find books about certain pieces of egyptian art. I suceeded, and i haven’t been so proud of myself in a long time! The library is so massive it was crazy finding books! And i love books! i have to find a better technique in finding the right ones though:)

Next thought: Matt 122, who needs it? thats all im going to say.

Why i want to be a teacher. Over the time of the finals i found myself going to my moms class in moose jaw, like everyday. I was waking up at 7am to get ready to be there… i dont even wake up that early to go to class everyday. I enjoyed being there so much, and i found that i could actually help out a lot! I helped with a christmas concert, what an intense experience. I made 16 angel costumes for kindergartens… they were beautiful i must say! I came to know almost all of my moms classes, and learned all of the numbers for the christmas concert. I knew the performance inside and out! The night of the concert my mom told me i had to help because no one else would be able to keep things organized, so i did! I had the backstage running smoothly while my mom ran the show! I was amazed at how much attention i could command with a room full of kindergartens, grade ones, twos and threes… even the teachers told me they couldnt believe how much the kids listened to me! It was a nice experience to be in charge! But i didnt just go to my moms school and help with the concert, i helped in their classroom too! I helped a boy who struggled with math with his math so he caught up with a months worth of homework. He was a student who needed a lot of one on one attention, and i could help him while my mom worked with the rest of the class (by the way her class is crazy, she had four different math programs going at once for the different levels, intense doesnt even cover it…). My mom told me he had never been as confident with his school work as when i helped him, and im glad i could do so!

What do i do with my life? i read. yep. i have an addiction. I have 50 books at home waiting to be read, right now im reading Brisingr. But before that, i dont know how many books ago, i read The City Of Ember by Jeanne Duprau. It is a book that reminded me of ECMP because it has so much to do with technology. The sequal book, the people of sparks, also did. The book is about a city that is in complete darkness and life relies on a generator that supports the cities power. “The builders” created the city, underground, in hopes to save the human race. War had overcome our world, and they had to find a way to save the humans, so they sent them underground for 200 years to repopulate and prepare for their arrival back to our world, but the instructions to do so were lost over time, and the city of Ember started to fall apart, as it wasnt meant to last so long. Basically these two kids find a way out, they get the news to the citizens of ember, and walk and have nothing, until they find a town that is called sparks. This is the aftermath of humans. The part of the book that caught my attention so much was how humans are lead to destruction and war. Even though the people of ember never were taught about war, and fighting, and all the mistakes humans had made before them, they still ended up doing so with the people of sparks. The people of sparks had no technology and completely thought themselves superior to the people of ember. They didnt understand where the ember people came from, and assumed they were stupid because they didn’t know anything about human history, or many of the words they wouldnt have been taught underground. The big thing was the technology the sparks people used were so basic, yet the ember people relied solely on electricity. The people of ember struggled because they became so dependent on electricty underground, they had to be retaught how to do manual labour.
And this is where i started thinking a lot about what would happen if there wasn’t any electricity, one day the world just shuts down and we have to fend for ourselves without mechanical power? All modern equipement started to be used up and for some reason we couldnt replicate it? How many people wouldn’t be able to live through a winter because they couldnt start a fire without a lighter, or matches?

So obviously this post could have been like four posts, but whatever i just wanted to do one massive one because i havent done one in a while, and thought it would be a good idea to just let it out! haha peace:)

Overcoming Entropy
It sounds like a simple idea– kids don’t like school… kids like games, so if we sneak some educational content into games, won’t everyone benefit? This session will explore what’s right and wrong about this idea, and how educators can discern the difference between the hype and the promise. I believe that although some of the promise has been oversold, there is much to learn from exploring the educational promise of games in the classroom.

This was a shorter presentation with a large amount of information. There were many important points i found in this presentation and found i had to pause and rewind because they were coming at me so fast. The big part of the presentation focused on the need for change.

The first thing described was how when a generation of teacher is succesful with innovative ideas, they move towards a routine. The ideas they had that were once new and different, and very effective, overtime become just a status quo. While they are still effective in their own way, a need for change is evident.

This presentator talked a lot about energy, and about energy in the classroom. Energy should be pushed into new forms of learning. The energy should work towards making learning more powerful. When the student can see the end result that learning is more powerful, so you should provide examples as well as tell stories. Providing a good example for the students is very important.

“Change is not linear…” was said in the presentation. She said that change is threads of influence that are linked when the influence is stronger. The power held by a person is a great responsibility. The power a person holds makes it able for them to influence others. When you influence them to do something, and they become confident, they are empowered and can influence further. The chain reaction is a huge lead in either a postitive direction or a negative direction, so we have to make sure we handle ourselves responsibly.

She said that we have to focus on the why rather than the end result. The process is just as much if not more important than the end result.

Finally, students have to find their voice and use it. It is our jobs to help them find that voice. Teaching is so important, it shapes the lives of the youth, and our future population. As a teacher you have to make sure you put that into perspective when you are teaching, guiding, and influencing them throughout their education.

Promise into Practice
It is a daunting and exciting time to teach English – especially as we consider the “shifts” in how we define literacy, and the toolset for our work as readers and writers continually expands. This session investigates one teacher’s work in studying her practice and students’ learning when she worked to bridge new literacies into “traditional” classroom practice.

I found this to be an amazing presentation. I took two pages of notes of just the things that i found the very most interesting. The main purpose of this presentation was how literacy is advanced much more beyond paper literacy. The different tasks using technology in a group of students had them thinking in different ways about reading.

A teacher worked with four different english classes and only took a technological approach with some of the class. Near the end, technology was incorporated in both groups. The groups were forced to individually talk about what they think literate is, and their experiences with literacy.

when students did their book reports they were challenged to work at it in a different way. They had to make a book trailer, and this trailer was a more interesting way to persuade interest in books! They also had a physical copy of their work on the book. With an oral presentation, once the presentation is done they dont have to think about it anymore, but with a hardcopy presentation they were able to look back on it and think about the book in a different perspective.

Another huge part of this presentation was how putting things online created a bigger audience.
A quote from the presentation that i found really interesting was “If two heads are better than one, then how bout two thousand”
This is an amazing thought, and makes a lot of sense. When students are able to connect with virtually millions of people, their level of thinking is on a much higer level, and they are given perspectives they might never have thought about. And it also interests the students so much more, because they are getting to show their work to so many more people!

Students were able to say “I have something to say”. They challenged themselves as learners, and became more confident doing so. Becoming more literate, in the paper way and the digital way, created a confidence that had them engaging more in conversation. The roles in the classroom shifted… Teacher as learner, student as learner, student as teacher… and roles added even more to that confidence.

Another quote i thought a lot about was how the students came to “read as writers, write as readers”. The read in the mindset of the writer, and as they wrote they thought of what the reader would be thinking when they read the work. This is such a deeper understanding of reading, and will be something I will think more of when I read and write.

xAsking Bigger Questions About Assessment
How can we demonstrate that what we do with teaching and learning technologies makes a difference in student learning? My presentation doesn’t answer that question directly, but it does explore a larger historical and cultural context for the issue of student assessment. The aim is to start with complex questions of meaning and purpose so that we construct and choose our assessments wisely.

This presentation began with comparisons between assessment and the works of Shakespeare. It began with how questions arrive out of everything, and how we come to those conclusions is different. It talks about how many methods of assessment come to wrong conclusions.

Assessment is a way to prove the improvement of the learning students have achieved. The ways things are assessed have changed over the years. The earliest form was oral testing, and this was more to test credibility, or prove your reputation. This was a more social and community form of assessment. Written assessment was a next step, which is much easier to scale, and time wise is easier. Much different and more individual than the oral testing.

But what is assessment testing? All of these methods, what are they trying to prove? They are trying to prove the understanding of the learning, but what is understanding? Assessing is difficult because it’s difficult to know how a person really understands something, so different approaches are necessary.

It talked about how play, like games and stuff, are good for initiating learning, and creates a form of self-assessment.

We need to prove what we have learned, that’s what assessing is. Assessing is getting the learner to give testimony to what they have done. Assessing requires more self-assessment.