I want to be an Imagineer!!!!

Goofy called me on my 8^th birthday.  You know, Mickey Mouse’s tall dog friend?  Yep, that’s the one!  My family and I were in Disney World and I approached the counter of a shop on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom.  I noticed on the name tag of the cast member behind the counter that her name tag said her name was also Jill.  I leaned to my mom and said “look, her name is Jill too, but I bet it’s not her birthday!”  The cast member Jill hustled around the counter and picked up the phone and I started to wonder why it was taking so long to buy a postcard.  She hung up the phone and 2 seconds later it rang.  She answered and looked at me and said it was for me.  What!!! I held the phone to my ear and heard Goofy give his funny little laugh and say “Happy Birthday!”  There was no mirror to prove this as fact, but I am sure my smile went from ear to ear!

It is safe to say that growing up, and even now, my family could be defined as Disney fanatics.  Disney World is our favorite vacation spot.  We know all the best ways to get from attraction to attraction to avoid the most people.  We know that New Year’s Eve is a horrible time to visit the parks (a great time for a Disney cruise though!)  We know that the best spot to view the closing fireworks at the Magic Kingdom is from the beach outside the Polynesian Hotel.  My sister even got married at Disney World!  And they are already planning my 3-month-old nephew’s first trip to the parks Earning your Mouseketeer hat is very important in my family!

When I was 10 or 11 I decided that I wanted to enter the STEM field.  That was before STEM was really talked about.  The boy sitting next to me in my 5^th grade class said that he wanted to be a physicist because he really liked math and science.  I said that I really liked math and science so I decided right there that I was going to be a physicist too.  And it stuck for a long time.  The course work got really hard and I started to doubt myself and eventually gave up because I got very discouraged and beaten down.  Many hardships in my life in my life brought me on a journey I never could have imagined since High School.  Through it all I learned how to fight and to never give up.  I am going back to school and I am going to tackle the STEM world and I will come out victorious!

So why am I diving back into the world of factoring and integrals and electric fields?  Because I want to be a Disney Imagineer! I want to be one of the masterminds behind the scenes that takes a design for a new attraction and calculates the most cost-effective building materials, or the heights and depths and widths everything has to be to stand tall and straight.  I want to run the numbers to make sure those Florida hurricanes won’t cause the attractions to be damaged and put people’s lives in jeopardy.  I want to make it possible for more little girls and boys to come to any of the Disney parks all over the world, walk through those gates and have their minds blown with the joy that is in the air.  I want to be a magic maker.  I want to take all my overwhelmingly amazing experiences growing up in the parks and apply those in the world of Imagineering and put huge smile on the faces of little girls and boys just as big as mine when Goofy called me.

This scholarship can help kick start my dream.  School and books and housing are expensive.  Winning this scholarship could give me the chance to attend school full time, work fewer hours, and devote more time to my studies.  I could purchase supplemental study materials so that I can really learn the material.  I don’t want to be just an average engineer.  I want to share Walt Disney’s legacy and to do that I really need to learn the material. 

When I was 14 we were in Disneyland in California and they were in the process of building a new attraction so the area was blocked off with a big wooden wall.  Disney would not just leave a wood wall plain, so they painted a mural.  Suddenly the wall became a huge underwater scene with a giant porthole in the middle. In the middle of the porthole it said “IMAGINEERS AT PLAY” and from that moment I knew I would do whatever it took to get behind those walls.

Thank you Activa for the chance at this scholarship! 
https://www.activia.co.uk/scholarship-us

Evaluation

1. Trace the evolution of your feelings and thoughts about the incorporation of technology into your own practice and classroom from the beginning of this course to now. Explain how your ideas and beliefs changed or been affirmed as a result of this course? What did you used to think compared to now? Please provide specific examples from your own experiences and the course when responding. (8 points)
2. Based on your response to prompt #1, please explain your current philosophy towards technology use in the classroom. If you were asked this question in a job interview, how would you answer this to a school hiring official? (8 points)
3. List the 2-3 technologies that you are most excited or interested in using in your own practice and explain why these are a good fit for your particular setting or content area. (4 points)

1. I did not know much about incorporating technology into my teachings.  I learned that it is possible to do so much more than I thought before.  I used to think that you could pretty much only use powerpoint and now I know there is so much more.  I never thought that I would like making a screencast because of having to hear my own voice, but after doing it I like it much more than standing up in front of a class.  I could see it as such a useful too for introductions or online lessons.  I learned that there is more to online school than I first thought.  Some people have good reasons to take an alternative route.  I never knew there were so many options in MN.

2. I think that technology is necessary.  I don't necessarily want to admit that, but I think it is.  In the outdoor field that I am in, I want to believe that it can all happen outdoors, but now I see there is aspects of the outdoor experience that can be amplified with technology.  Things like lifeproof cases on ipads and apps to help identify trees or birds or flowers.  Things like a blog to share with friends and family what is going on in the woods.  Technology allows us to share information to a greater number of people much faster then once before.

3. My blog- I think it is a great way to share about the week in the woods after bringing a group of students on a camping trip, or to share my experiences on different adventures of my own.

Creating my own website- I never envisioned myself as the one behind the computer but I really enjoyed making my own page.  I could see myself doing it if I work at a camp or other company to keep the public informed.

Screencast- I could see myself setting up short informational videos on different natural oriented things and having them availible for a park or nature center that I may work for.

Teaching Lesson

I enjoyed creating a little lesson to teach the class.  It was a fun challenge.  I learned that sometimes it is hard to fit the time requirement, which challenged me to research more and do more learning!

Module 5

I think that online learning has its pluses and minuses.  I think that for some people it is definitely the way to go.  For example, a family friend recently got very sick and spent a lot of time in the hospital. His daughter is in high school and decided to switch to an online school program so she could spend more time with him and be able to commute back and forth to the hospital without missing as much class.  For her it worked out very well.

I still am a believer in the physical classroom.  I think there is power in having a physical teacher standing in front on you.  You gain from the social interactions and group work.  I don't believe that someone who has not grown up doing group projects will do as well in the working world as someone who has.  Because I have not spent much time in a virtual classroom it is hard for me to see as much collaboration happening.  That is based off my online classes where there was little to none interaction between students.

I do not see myself as moving into the online classroom.  It is hard to lead a virtual canoe trip!  I suppose it is not that hard, but it is not as fun and takes all the challenge and rewards away from the experience.

Here is a link to my questions.

Screencast Video!

I enjoyed using screencast to make a short video.  I think it is a great introduction for teachers to use for their students.  I think it would also be a nice tool to share what students have learned with parents at the end of a unit of a field trip.  I could see myself using it to send to students or clients at the beginning to inform them about the upcoming events and of things they need to bring.  I could also see myself using it as a way to do a recap at the end of the week.

UDL and Accessibility

1. What did I know and what did I think about UDL and accesibility before class?
2. What did I learn through my preparation for and participation in the UDL and accessibility activities? Explain what UDL is. Explain what accessibility is and how it is different than UDL.
3. Provide some examples of what teachers can do to design lessons keeping the principles of UDL in mind
4. Describe some of the key things that you can do, as a teacher, to ensure that your online resources are accessible to students with disabilities (you may want to include screenshots to illustrate these. e.g. a screenshot of a YouTube with close captions)
5. How did my understanding and thinking about UDL and accessibility change through this process?

1. I did not know anything about UDL and accessibility before class.

2. I learned from WebAim that there were laws governing accessibility for all people. I did not know there were things like screen readers or mouth sticks to help people who had various disabilities. I think the UDL differs from accessibility because it looks at all people not just people with disabilities. It aims to set up success in learning with every student by teaching to all learning styles. Accessibility is aimed more at people with some sort of disability like motor or visual impairment.

3. I think teachers can teach the same lesson more than once using different presentation modes, like a powerpoint one time and acting it out with costumes and props a second time. I think also that teachers should allow students to choose presentation styles to which best suits how they will learn and process the material.

4. As a teacher I would follow guidelines to make my websites easy for screen readers to read. I would always include captions on my videos, I would include pictures in the text. I Would provide assistance to those that might need extra time with the internet or might need help accessing pages that are not user friendly.

5. I became much more aware of how much room there is to grow on making the internet accessible for all. I also learned that teachers need to be more creative when setting up the classroom so that all students can have successful learning experiences.

link to google doc

Module 3

1. Give an introduction to your blog post on collaboration tools by explaining how online (and also tablet based) collaboration tools can be used by students. As you do this, realize that many readers of your blog may not be aware that it is possible for multiple students to be able to access and work on a shared online tool, so in your explanation, help them understand (in a compelling way!) how this can be done.
2. What did you know and what did you think about online collaboration before?
3. What did you learn through your preparation for and experiences within the module?
4. How did your understanding and thinking about the topic change through this process?
5. Provide an annotated list of some of your top picks for online collaboration tools that you might use with your students. In your annotation, give the name of the tool, include a link to it online (or to information about it if it is a tablet-based tool), and then describe ways in which this specific tool can be used by students to collaborate with each other (and with others beyond their classroom).

1. Collaboration tools are very handy tools that are used for many users to work together on something.  It may be a google doc which allows many people to type and add to the document at one time, or it may be some sort of study tool that allows users to play games with each other to learn the material.

2. Before I did this module I did not know very much about the possibilities of online collaboration.  I had no idea there were so many tools out there that can be used in classrooms.  I thought google docs/ slides/ sheets was it.

3. I learned that digital collaboration is a much more powerful tool than I thought.  Teachers are connecting students to other students all over the world, students are learning to work together more, students have a better opportunity to learn from each other, the list goes on!

4.I become a much bigger supporter of digital collaboration.  Part of me was stuck in the mindset of "well I got along just fine with books and no technology" but after seeing the videos and hearing the testimonies I believe that there is truly a good use for it.

-Google Docs: I think this is a great tool for group papers.  It allows each student to work on separate parts of the paper and eliminates the need to copy and paste and merge components.  Outside of the classroom it can be used to share information for parties in multiple people are in the planning committee.  I've used it to aid in planning a large event.

-Flickr: I like this site because it allows people to share creative ideas and projects.  In and out of the classroom it would be a great tool for sharing photos after field trips or vacations.  In a school setting students could go out on some sort of scavenger hunt and then share the findings over the site.