4 weeks....

WOW...Exactly 4 weeks from today our baby boy will be making his debut. (unless he decides to come early) It is so hard to believe that this pregnancy is almost over, it really did go so fast. I went to the doctor on Friday and she said that he has really grown :) Addison has really seemed to be excited about baby brother lately. She talks about him and rubs my belly. I think she is going to be the BEST big sister. It has helped having her sweet cousin, Cole, around. What a perfect introduction to "babies" he has been for Addison...she adores him :) I need to give a "shout out" to my husband on this post...Thank you so much honey, for letting me get some rest this weekend!! It was MUCH needed. I am filled with total GRATITUDE this Monday morning for my undeserved BLESSINGS!!!!

Spring Break...

Well Spring Break 2011 is almost over. In the morning it will be back to school and almost the start of CRCT. I have to admit that I am actually happy to be going back to work...call me crazy. I love my sweet 2 year old daughter more than life itself but WOW raising a 2 year old is hard work. She has always been very obedient but she is now testing the boundaries big time. I thought I would totally be able to handle a two year old because I have such strong classroom control even with my EBD boys but boy was I wrong! My sweet baby girl plays me like a fiddle :) I think being 34 weeks pregnant and 40 years old also wears me down when it comes to being as consistent as I need to be but I am trying. Don't get me wrong, she is a good girl and she is nearly perfect for her babysitters but when it comes to Mommy she knows she'll win. I have 5 weeks to get control back as her baby brother will be here. So, I LOVE being with my sweet baby girl but am happy that her and I will both be back on our "normal" schedule :) We both do a little better with structure.

Tubes

This week Addison had tubes put in her ears. We are hoping and praying that this will end the numerous amount of ear infections that we have been dealing with.

Addison continues to AMAZE me. She was such a trooper while we were at the medical center. Most of the other kids were crying and throwing fits. Addison had a joyful spirit even though we had been awake since 2:30 am. She said "good morning" to all the doctors and nurses. The nurses and doctors told us she would probably be crying in the recovery room but when we walked in the nurse was holding our sweet sweet girl. She was sleeping so peacfully. When I woke her up she just snuggled closer to me. She drank some apple juice, ate some crackers and we were free to go.

I am so grateful to our Father in heaven that He has given our precious baby girl a sweet spirit. We love her so much. I just pray that Addison's baby brother will be blessed with that same sweet spirit.

31 weeks...

My little guy is getting big. I am 31 weeks pregnant today. I am feeling great especially for being 40 and pregnant :) My doctor is very pleased with everything so far.
Here is a link showing what 31 weeks is all about...
http://www.babycenter.com/6_your-pregnancy-31-weeks_1120.bc

Now if we could just agree on a name :)

Google Reader - Blogs I am following

Blogs that I am following with Google Reader


http://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/

http://farroutlinks.net/blog/

http://misterteacher.blogspot.com/

http://nolaga.blogspot.com/

I'm BACK!

Ok, so life got in the way of finishing my graduate degree but I am now finally doing it. After a two year hiatus I am taking my last class. My original cohort graduated in the spring of 2009, I however was busy taking care of my sweet baby girl who was diagnosed with heart failure. She had a very successful open heart surgery on May 20, 2009.

I am happy to report that my sweet baby girl is now a VERY healthy and BUSY 2 year old. We are expecting her baby brother to arrive on May 16th at 11:15 am (scheduled C-Section)

When I found out we were expecting baby #2, I made a promise to myself and to my husband that I would finally finish my degree.

I am enjoying the 2.0 class. It is re-igniting my fire for technology in the classroom.

ECOMP 5007

Stacie Stoller
ECOMP 5007
March 8, 2008
Project One Proposal

a) This lesson is designed for 7th grade students who are in an inclusion class. Some of the students have been diagnosed with LD, autism, ADD, ADHD, EBD and some of the students are considered “on level”.
b) The characteristics of many of the 7th grade students with or without a diagnosis is that they are very easily distracted. My students with LD struggle greatly with the difficult vocab words.
c) Students are introduced to new vocabulary. Students will be able to use vocabulary words correctly to edit a “My Space” page at the end of the lesson.
d) Teacher will introduce the 12 words through Power Point and links to Inspiration. Students will have the choice to work on one of two puzzle links. The “quiz” at the end will assess student’s knowledge of the words.
e) The LD student will have the choice to read or have the text read to them with the Natural Reader. The student with Autism is VERY visual so the use of the Inspiration Map for each word will help this student to better understand. Using the “My Space” page for the quiz will engage that ADD/ADHD and typical 7th grade student who is easily distracted and easily bored with our vocabulary book.

Final Project 5106

Here is the link to my final portfolio for ECOMP 5106
http://stoller5106.weebly.com/index.html

5106 Brochure - Science Court

http://msstaciestoller.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/5/132513/5106_brochure_stoller.doc

My Final Project Reflection

http://msstaciestoller.weebly.com/

I created a Class Website for my final project. This was much more time consuming then I had first anticipated but I had so much fun. Searching through websites of other teachers I found what I liked and didn't like. There were some websites created by teachers that were not very user friendly and some that didn't seem to serve much of a purpose. I decided that I wanted my site to be easy to use and a site that my parents could actually benefit from.

After talking with Ellen and looking at her site I decided to use Weebly as my host site. Weebly was easy to use but I did run into a few problems. I didn't like the look of the attached files. I tried to change this but was unable. I would have liked it to look more like a list as opposed to the generic looking icon. My plan is to eventually link all of my worksheets,power points and test reviews for each unit in both Math and Science. My Reading curriculum is still "under construction." We are reading the Westing Game, which the kids love, but I still have not implemented the Math strands of Reading. I will link sites as I find them.

The most exciting part of creating my website was when I was able to find the HTML for different widgets and horizontal lines. I've learned so much from this class. Blogging, creating websites, RSS feeds, Bloglines, TeacherTube, Wikki, WebQuests, HTML and PortaPortal are just a few of the things I've learned. My friends are benefitting from me taking this class as well. Leann, a close friend, had been searching for a job for several months. I taught her how to create a blog and showed her Mashable which lead her to LinkedIn. Linkedin is the site where she ended up finding her current employer.

I wrote a proposal for the technology committee at my school and it was approved. My proposal suggested that to better utilize the interactive white boards in our school, we should have teachers apply to have them in their classrooms. It will be like applying for a grant. There has to be a plan and the teacher will have to keep data. The data can be pre/post test or anecdotal data.

project

http://msstaciestoller.weebly.com/

Geocities Website

Here is my "practice" website.

Weekend at the Beach with the Girls

Yahoo!!!!!!!!! Next weekend Julie, Sue and I are headed to Hilton Head to see our girl, Aimee!!!!

Web-Based Bookmarking Site

MY BOOKMARKS

I used PortaPortal because I liked the visual layout of it. It was more time consuming than Furl but I am a very visual person so it was worth putting the time in it.

A future fiction

Warlick, D. (2004) A Future Fiction. Library Media Connection. Retrieved May 26, 2005 from http://davidwarlick.com/ff_article/.

Ok, after hearing many of you talk about this article I finally read it tonight. I have many thoughts about it.

1. Finance- where is the money going to come from to create these type of classrooms and media centers?
2. media chips- I don't really like that idea of media chips tracking where everybody is....a little too "big brother" for me.
3. BOOKS - less books in our media centers?? Can you take a laptop to the beach for trashy novel reading? I'm all about saving the trees by using less paper but I also love books. One of my most special memories of being a child is sitting with my siblings while Mom read to us.
4. PRIVACY- We all NEED a little more of it.
5. Technology- I am loving learning new technology teaching tools HOWEVER we can't use only technology.

It is an article I will share with others....I think my friends will get a kick out of it.

I LOVED working with Dreamweaver today!!!

Web Presentation

Mary and I won't be searching macro invertabrates today but we will be presenting our site to you. Hopefully you will like the tech tools we will be showing you.

Time to go to Bed!!

It's way past my bedtime and I have to get up early for class, but I am still up working or maybe playing with all of the different sites we were introduced to tonight. I hope that I am not the only "geek" that gets so excited about all of this stuff.
My favorite thing of the night is - www.msdewey.com
I even called a couple of my friends tonight and told them to check it out. Click on the "best of". HILARIOUS! Not something you could show your class but very funny for you and your friends. See y'all in the morning :)

Web Evaluation

Mary Barkley and I will be presenting Biology4Kids.

Required Reading

Schrock, K. (2002) The ABC’s of Web Site Evaluation: Teaching Media Literacy in the Age of the Internet. Classroom Connect. Retrieved February 22, 2004 from http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/pdf/weval_02.pdf

Nothing like waiting until the last minute....
After reading this article I realize that I need to look more at the Biology4kids website that Mary and I are evaluating.

When choosing a website in the past to use with my students I never checked all of those things. I know now that I need to. Kids as well as some of us adults tend to believe everything that we read on the internet.
I'm interested in the WebBuddy http://www.bluesquirrel.com/products/webwhacker/
I'm not quite understanding what it's all about but want to look into it for my webquest.

Required Reading and Math Tech class

This morning I attended a training session on the technology associated with our new series of math books. The resources available online to teachers and students is amazing. I am excited at the MANY possibilities. My next little project will be putting together a "How To" power point to the math teachers at my school. I am so excited to use one of the Teacher Tube videos as my "hook".

Required Reading #1 http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan04/richardson.shtml

Blogging and RSS — The "What's It?" and "How To" of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators by Will Richardson, Supervisor of Instructional Technology, Hunterdon Central Regional High School

Mr. Richardson does a great job of explaining not only what it means to "blog" and RSS but he also gives different ways that teachers can use these tools to enhance learning. I liked the examples he gave, especially the example of the teacher in Ohio who had her students blogging as a book talk and included the author.
My plan this year is to have students and parents use RSS to subscribe to my blog. As a special education case manager I often hear parents make excuses for their students such as, "He can't read his own handwriting, so he didn't know what the homework was" or "the teacher didn't sign his agenda to make sure that he wrote the homework correctly". These excuses take the responsibility off of the student and onto the teacher which is only perpetuating the problems most of my guys struggle with. If parents and students have access to my blog on a daily basis these excuses will hold even less weight than they do now. Anyway that I can encourage and support my students to be more responsible young people I will.