Energy Conservation Project

Our assignment was to use the research method to analyze energy consumption in our life. I chose to look closer at my driving habit and to determine how much fuel I'd save if I walked to work than than drove. I asked myself, "How many gas and money can I save by walking to and from school everyday?"

Honestly, I became a lot more aware of my energy consuming habits after this project. Fuel is an expensive energy consumable right now selling at $5.65 per gallon in Bethel. I've had never really taken into account our (husband and I) daily fuel consumption and how much fuel we use driving to and from work.

I was proud that I saved just about $30 and five gallons of fuel that month by walking to work. Clearly, in the long run I could save myself up to $350 a year if I walked to and from year if I walked to and from work each month. Even just walking during four months out of our school year would save considerably. Not only did I conserve fuel and expenses, I also gained physical benefit by exercising six days out of my week. Of course, it took ten minutes longer to get to work, however, the benefits far out-weighed the slight inconveniences. By walking, I started each day with a fresh perspective and felt better all-around. After school, walking home gave me a chance to reflect and unwind from the day's emotion and events.

I chose to perform this experiment during our fall season. Clearly, gas consumption rises during the winter months due to the falling temperatures and the need to "warm-up" the truck before driving to school. It would be interesting to compare fall and spring semester's energy savings. The price of gas and consumption of fuel just continues to add up and you realize how much you really could save.

Saving our truck four miles each day doesn't seem like much of a factor but when I weighed in the larger picture, it was clear how much of a difference walking can be. Walking four miles a day wasn't so bad. It wasn't just good for our earth, it was good for my health!

Reflection on presentation of video:
I literally was LOLing and shrieking OMG when I watched myself. I have some awkward tones and can tend to talk fast. Sometimes, I noticed myself looking into other parts of the room and not focused on my audience (the camera=students). I wonder if I do this unconsciously in my classroom when I deliver lessons?

Thank goodness we weren't required to post this video! All in all, it was a very effective reflection tool to help me "see myself" though a pretty straightforward lens! I am going to take the advice and do this every year, maybe even quarterly!

Download my project report here.

Download my PowerPoint presentation here.

Internet Resources

Useful Internet Resources

Going online is an everyday practice, taking attendance on Power School, checking email, entering grades into Power Grade. It's all part of a daily routine. Reading online news to know the latest local, state, national and even world events. I use a variety of websites online that aid my instruction but which ones are the best and most useful in my profession now?

I teach 9th grade Reading and Writing as separate classes and have a vibrant group of students eager to read new and interesting literature. We are always reading rich stories and writing about our lives and topics that are connected to us. Having a library of supplementary resources to access and use immediately is really useful throughout each unit. These are the top three sites that I regularly to aid my instruction and planning:

1. Teen Ink
2. WritingFix
3. Slideshare

Here's why...

1. Teen Ink-- http://www.teenink.com

Teen Ink is a colorful and interactive site that allows teenage writers to begin publishing and reviewing a variety of writing. All genres of writing including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, persuasive are represented. Students can submit work to be published online and may also be featured in their publication. One of the peer- features I like about is that it allow students to participate in active responding and receive immediate feedback from readers across the nation. Teen Ink places them in an environment of talking about writing and publishing as young professionals. It’s also a great site to use for modeling and editing.

Anyone can access the site but in order to share and respond to published writing, one needs to set up an account with their email address and create a Teen Ink identity through a username. It is a fairly easy one step process.

In my classroom, I’ve used the site as a way to introduce professional online publishing and responding. Students submit their personal narratives, poetry, book and movie reviews, as well as, read and comment on others writing. At left, one of my student's personal narrative was published, and she shares her story of her "Uppi" (In Yup'ik, grandfather is translated in the word Apa). She calls her Apa, "Uppi".

The site has also encouraged young writers of literature and poetry to submit their work on a regular basis.



2. The Northern Nevada Writing Project and WritingFix-- http://writingfix.com

Generating fast-write prompts daily for my students is necessary in our writing classroom. WritingFix has an online prompt generator that is a quick and easy way to find a prompt for the day that may relate to the unit you are teaching. Not only does it offer a wide variety that appeals to all types of personalities, it offers fun and interactive 6+1 Trait resources for drafting and revision that teach the traits using online instruction and downloadable materials.

One of my favorite items that I’ve borrowed is the trait post-it notes that are can be used as a self-responding or peer-reviewing check-off (example at left). The students find it easy to respond to the checklist and students starts to communicate and generate new ideas. There are also lessons and websites posted by model teachers that correlate with writing units you may be teaching. The writing program itself is based out of Nevada but has spread to further audiences.

3. Slideshare-- http://www.slideshare.net

Slideshare offers free viewing of many different content area lessons and provides teachers with guided presentations to help instruct and train you to deliver a great lesson. Many varieties of presentations are shared and a written script of the presentation is also published below the slideshow. The slideshow plays as a movie with a direct fast-forwarding feature to flip through slides.

When studying various authors and pieces of literature, Slideshare is useful to provide students with a visual method of learning by seeing images and reading important facts and information. You can upload your own presentations created on PowerPoint (or other presentation applications including even imovie) to also contribute to the sharing of presentations with people of many professional backgrounds. It is compatible with sharing document, PDFs and videos, making it a great resource for research, connecting with others and sharing ideas.

One more notable site that I have to mention:
This I Believe-- http://thisibelieve.org
Based on the old 1950s NPR program "This I Believe", it was a radio show hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. During the sorrow of the Cold War and racial tension, the radio show encouraged essays that shared guiding life principles. Today, though the radio show no longer exists, this site houses all the archived essays and audio recordings. You can search by theme to find a related essay by people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Tony Hawk, and Muhammed Ali. These essays are a great resource that allows the students to experience a live reading from the author that heightens the normal reading experience.

School tech culture

Below is the link to access my "Anthropological Assessment" of the technology culture at my school (Bethel Regional High School).

View it here.

Technology is such a powerful, useful tool in my classroom that I depend on using each day. It is part of what I teach now in hopes of my students becoming responsible composers, researchers, networkers, and investigators. Even further, it expands their creativity and learning, becoming stronger readers, writers and thinkers.
This assignment helped me realize all the potential with our current technology offered at our school, and more importantly, the opportunity I have to further learn and teach my students through multi-media literacy projects. Despite the limitations we do have with network/connectivity issues and the demand for more technology, we are so privileged to have our current resources.

Futuring Reflection

Futuring Reflection- 9/30/09 

a.    How would you “grade” or assess Fox Becomes a Better Person, and School Train?

 

School Train could be adapted for my 9^th grade English students to assess understanding and application of the use of metaphor and the presentation of their composition through a multi-media resource. Specialty skills, such as the production of the movie using the media software, would have to taught of course and then assessed to ensure that they could complete it in groups or individually, however, the written work explaining how the element connected with school and life would be completed before the media production could be assessed as a written piece. In teaching metaphor, students could be based on the effective use of the literary device in their writing. Fox Becomes a Better Person could be assessed for the development of a short-story, including character development, moral/lesson, and presentation through the combination of writing, art, storytelling/speaking, acting and of course, technology production.  

 

b.    What impacts could the developments portrayed in epic2015 have on your classroom, particularly with respect to things like podcasting?

 

Clearly the events portrayed by epic2015 present a living reality for everyone. Our students we teach are more exposed and impacted by the technology around them and are experiencing an advancing technology. Teaching students effective research skills, how to read online literature, presentation of an “on-line self”, and understanding credibility and authorship are important. Podcasting has many educational benefits and avenues to supplement content material. Students can experience recording through podcasting instantaneously, clearly shown through this video.

 

c.     How might you use SabrinaJourney as a model for something you would do with your own students?

 

Sabrina’s video reminded me a lot my own journey and story to share. I’ve seen other digital stories created by students and adults and feel that they have a special effect to connect with the viewer. Digital storytelling can be a project extension for presentation of personal narratives or autobiographies, or even biographies. It could also be used for poetry and other language arts projects as well. I am very interested in designing a digital story unit in my English classes this year in relation to our personal writing, poetry and short-story units.