Journal

=** ﻿Journal **= March 29, 2011 I never thought that I would be teaching a turtle in this class. However, I have developed an affection toward LOGO's eager-to-learn turtle. There is such a sense of satisfaction that I get from typing in programing code and finding that the little guy knows exactly what I mean. Of course, there is a great amount of trial and error when working with LOGO. I have had to break my habit of clinging to the crtl+z command when the turtle has a misstep. Of course there are little battles when it comes to working with the cute little turtle; there are instances when a string of commands is rendered worthless because the pen was up and a typing error of lt instead or rt results in a scribble rather than a pentomino. However, with these small frustrations come small victories, which are so fulfilling. Overall, creating fill programs, making puzzles, and creating a very well educated turtle has felt like child's play.

April 12, 2011 I have finally solidified my project plan for this class. With only three weeks left in the semester, I have a fair amount of work ahead of me. Fortunately, I think that SketchUp and LOGO are incredibly fun programs so this "work" is more like play. My interest in SketchUp has helped me to discover the world of YouTube tutorials. There are literally hundreds of tutorals for SketchUp that demonstrate how to make things from spheres to castles. It's amazing how time just melts away when I watch these amazing videos!

April 14, 2011 I have found that since starting this class, I have begun to be much more aware of the lack of technology usage in my field placement classroom. In my classroom there is a class set of MacBooks that just sit in the locked case. It's such a shame! I will be teaching two lessons in the next two weeks and I fully intend to dust the cobwebs off these computers. One lesson is a kindergarten math lesson on adding numbers to 8 and the other is a second grade lesson on graphing the lengths of objects. I'm thinking that Excel will be a wonderful tool to use to show how lengths of objects can be graphed.