The World is Changing!

I watched the video "Did you Know" by Fischbowl and was very shocked by the statistics they showed. I always thought that the U.S. was the best country and we were so much better than every other country. I always thought that the U.S. was the smartest nation and we dominated over all other countries. This video i thought made the U.S. look somewhat ignorant. Our college rate was lower and most people that live in the U.S. are not fluent in another language. I think that is because we think we are so superior to other countries and think everyone should speak English. i also did not know how strong Great Britain was or how educated India and China are.Knowing that just blows my mind.

I didn't realize that people skipped around from different jobs and careers as much as they do. Once i get my degree in Elementary Education I plan on finding a good school and staying employed at that school until i retire. I like the comfort of having one job and staying their and not having to start over at multiple schools. I can't understand why people change jobs so much.

Technology has grown so much over such a short period of time. The statistics that i read from the video i thought were outrageous. Technology is really taking over the world. Before too long we will use technology for everything. I am a big fan of technology and take full advantage of it, but i really fill like maybe people would not know what to do without their cell phones, tv, and computers. The one thing that scares me is what if something major happens and it shuts down all of our electronics and things powered by satellites? I think the world would go into a state of chaos. The world is a changing place and technology has really taken over and affected everything and changed how we do things.

Alabama Connecting Classroom, Educators and Students Statewide program (ACCESS)

ACCESS is a step in the right direction for Alabama schools. Alabama is a very poor state when it comes to education. The answer to this problem is ACCESS. ACCESS will offer advanced diploma courses, additional courses that alot of schools do not offer, advanced placement and dual enrollment courses, remediation courses, and help upgrade existing courses.
ACCESS will help teachers evolve education into the new technology era through the classroom. There will be technology provided to the teacher for a new way of teaching, which will open up new possibilities for the classroom. This program will provide schools with more teachers and introduce something called distance learning. Distance learning is where instructors and students can be in two different places at two different times and communicate through technology like the internet and multimedia.
ACCESS sounds like a very good idea, and the answer to alot of existing problems in Alabama public high schools. This program was designed to add technology to the classroom and open many doors to learning. By adding this program students who are in low income schools will get the same education and opportunities as a top private school. Now all of these schools will have classes they never thought they had the funding to offer, students will be better prepared for college, many can do dual enrollment and already have college credits when they graduate. ACCESS seems like it is a step in the right direction for Alabama public schools. I will probably never use ACCESS because i am going to be a kindergarten teacher, but nonetheless, my students who i teach will grow up and one day get to use ACCESS, which will better prepare them for their future.

Alabama Learning Exchange(ALEX)

When i started this semester i did not know what ALEX or ACCESS was or anything about the programs that teachers use. After browsing through the site and all the links provided i now know what it is and how to use it. ALEX, Alabama Learning Exchange, is a fully equipped guide to show teachers how to teach and show new and old teachers new tricks to teaching and helps teachers get ideas for lesson plans. The ALEX site has many different things linked to it. It has a link where you can choose the course of study, put in your grade to be taught, and then browse through many different lesson plan ideas, and then it gives complete directions as to how to go about teaching the lesson plan. This looked very useful to me. I went through this and found many lesson plans, which i might use one day when i start teaching kindergarten. There is also a web link page, which you can click on and pick different teacher links, which will take you to many links that looked very useful. I went into this web links page and clicked on counseling and guidance and read about how to understand death and grief. I thought this was good for a teacher to read just in case a student or a family member of a student dies during the school year. Death is a very touchy subject and it is good to know how to go about talking about it. There is a link where you search for many things, a teacher workplace, and professional learning. Some of these sites were not up yet and some needed passwords to look in them and i do not have an account so i was not able to browse around these too much. I also looked around ACCESS a little bit, which looks more geared toward high schools more so than elementary schools, which i would be teaching in. Basically ALEX is a site where teachers can go to find lesson plans, find ideas for the classroom, look up how to handle certain situations which may occur, and find information for almost anything they could need to answer their questions as teachers or questions parents and students may ask.
ALEX looks very useful i thought from looking through it. I think when i become a kindergarten teacher i will probably use ALEX alot. I will probably get most of my lesson plans from the sites. They had some very good ideas. The site also showed me what i will need to achieve in teaching them each year. I actually learned alot of what i will be teaching just from looking at the site. This site also looks like it will be a great help in learning how to deal with situations, which might be very delicate. I also went into a site which showed activities kids would enjoy that are still teaching them. I saw some links that showed how it was very important to get parents involved with the kids and their school work and it had ideas and lesson plans for that. That looked like a very good idea. I think ALEX is the answer to all teachers prayers. I feel like i have learned alot about teaching just from going through the site.

I have been thinking about what to do for my week 5 presentation

Hello again, its Noelle just checking in before the deadline. I have spent the weekend pondering on what to do this presentation on, trying to come up with a storyboard. The presentation has to be on some aspect of my life. My family is very small and i like to keep that aspect of my life private. I do not have a job as of right now because i have overwhelmed myself with too many classes. My life is pretty boring so i don't think i have any adventures to take note of being that i have only been alive for 20 years. I thought about it and i don't really have any hobbies and i am not a track star, or have anything i have a passion for to write about right now. Then i started thinking what do i do in my spare time? I am a very social person and i spend my free time surrounded by my friends. I have a group of friends that i am very close to and that i see everyday. Then i started thinking what do we do when we are together? We go to the beach on a regular basis, we like to travel, but not too far, and we go to alot of shows and concerts. We love concerts and music. Concerts are the reason i have no money, but it is definitely worth it to me. So as of right now i am going to do my presentation on my adventures on going to concerts and shows. I am not sure if this is going to stick with me so this may change in the next couple of days, but these are my thoughts so far.

........I thought about this for along time some more and then i decided what would be even more fun would be to do my presentation on my 12 best friends. These are the people who i am always around and make all the concerts and adventures fun. These people are like my family and i want to talk about them!

Noelle's Introduction

Hello classmates, my name is Jessica Noelle Shipman. I answer to Noelle, which is my middle name. I am an Elementary Education major and hope to become a kindergarten teacher.I am an only child and i come from a very small family, which is spread out all over the country. I am from Deatsville,AL, which is a very small town also referred to as Slapout.The entire town is based around Lake Jordan, which was really fun to live on.I love the water, going out on the boat, and water sports. I came to South Alabama originally to become an Occupational Therapist because they have a very good master's program for O.T. majors. I figured out that the medical field was not for me and took an interests test, which lead me to Education and here i am.

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