Our New House!

Here we are on our first night as homeowners in our new house making it a home!

I finally have something to blog about! I'm sooo excited. Jace and I finally got a house we've been waiting for. When we first started to look for a house we wanted at least a three bedroom, two bath with 2+ acres for my horses. We found a couple that we really liked but they didn't seem to be working out and we started to wonder if we were ever going to find anything. We decided to expand our search and we looked at some two bedroom one bath houses and found one that we really loved. It was small and a little rough around the edges but the bones were nice and the kitchen and bathroom had recently been updated, which was nice because they are the most expensive things to fix. We decided to put an offer on it at the beginning of February, but it was a short sale and we knew we could be in for a long hall! Between finding someone to help us finance and hearing back from the lender who owned the house it took us about a month, which really isn't that bad. So we were excited. Things seemed to be falling into place so we were getting really excited. Everything was going fairly smoothly until about a week before our closing date! Let me tell you it was stressful. So we sign all the papers and paid our closing cost, which wasn't cheap, and were ready to close within a few days. Well we had to have a final approval from the sellers bank, since it's a short sale, so we kept waiting and waiting and it wasn't come. So the day before the closing date (March 31st) my mom, who I used for our Realtor, calls the sellers Realtor and says are we going to close because the lock for the interest rate expires on the 31st. He then tells my mom that the reason the final approval has come in yet is because they have been trying to negotiate the $2,000 the seller was asked to pay at closing so his house didn't go into foreclosure. What a surprise to us! We thought that was already settled because they signed an approval letter with those terms about a month ago! We were pissed to say the least. So my mom being a fabulous Realtor told them that since this was new news to us, that if we had to ask for an extension on the interest rate, which would be an additional $400 to $500 that the seller would be paying for it. Go Mom! The last 48 hours have been so long, especially since I had a sleepless night thinking about not getting a house we were so excited to buy! But it closed today! March 31st and Jace and I are finally homeowners! I feel like a real grown up buy our first home but it's so exciting. There is so much work to be done but we are blessed that all but one of Jace's brothers (six of them) are coming this weekend to help with flooring, plumbing, fencing, painting, and anything else that needs to be done, and my parents. We will have quite the work crew and are very excited about it. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will be living in a up to date new home that we are proud to call our own! Here are some before pictures of the house and a few without flooring because we've already started to gut the old to put in the new on our first night! Enjoy and I'm going to try to be good to update the blog! I'm not much of a blogger, but here goes!

The living room with really bad blue carpet!

The entry way/ Laundry Room with bad sub-flooring!
The 2nd bedroom with that horrid blue carpet The master Bedroom with even worse carpet! Who comes up with this stuff? The fire place that needs to have the stove replaces & no more blue carpet! The tile is half way gone. This will be the biggest project of removing the flooring!
The remodeled bathroom. I really like it, it has a country feel! It's nice :)

INTASC

This is the criteria I needed to meet for my web2.0 tools and multimedia project for the INSTAC 4.13 & 6.35.

Multimedia Project

The tool I used was called Voice Thread. It's a tool that allows you to upload videos, pictures, voice data and you can comment yourself and as a visitor. The comments can be made by either web cam, phone, typing, voice comments, or Audio comment. You can zoom in on pictures and move around to get a full look at what is posted. You can add captions as the creator and explain what is going on at the beginning. It is fairly quick and easy to do. I enjoyed doing this but without a web cam I feel I missed out on some fun tools. I do feel that when I become more familiar with this tool I will be able to jazz up and make things more interesting.




http://voicethread.com/share/754980/

I think this tool would be great in a classroom. I am going to be a chemistry teacher and with that I can explain experiments step by step for those students who are more visual through pictures and commenting with doddle or voice to show the students the critical parts and steps. If I am going to be absent one day it is a great tool for me to be involved with my students almost like I've never left and it can really make things easier for a substitute having the plans mapped out, where they can just hit play and the students are getting direct instruction from me without me actually being there. This tool also can allow students to comment on projects outside of the classroom, for example if homework is posted through voice thread they can comment on what is wrong, what is right, or what they think should happen next. This is a great tool to use in a classroom and it can allow for some variety and interaction for the students without just being a video for students to watch.

Analyzing Student Data in a Spreadsheet

Using Google Docs spreadsheet was fairly easy for me as I have used excel a lot over the years. What I found to be difficult was when trying to filter out the above average students to graph, the graph would include all students if the above average students were hid. I then made a new sheet and deleted the other students so my chart would work. It did not take me very long to do the assignment so that was nice.



As for an analysis of the data, almost every student who was below average did better on their last test than they did on test 6. Many of the students also did better on every test than they did the test before from test 6 to 10. This is what you would expect as the students have a better idea as to what the test format will look like and they could have a better grasp about what information the teacher may place on the tests. As an instructor I would be pleased that the students improved, but I would ask these students what they did differently to gain a better idea as to why they improved. This will help me know what student habits help them so I can try to help them not be below average in the class in test scores. I would really concentrate on the students who had a small improvement from test to test because their improvement was smaller than their fellow classmates. These students would be Walter and Queen. I would talk to Katherine as well to see why her test scores very so much from test to test. Once I understood how the students learned best I would try to teach my classes towards those students a little more to try and help them in the everyday class topics, which will help them prepare for future tests.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArCsEZq1EAp4dENpVVNXeXQ5czdjVWViSVpaVHNNRXc&hl=en

Reflection of Skype

I skyped with my brother who is in Eastern Oregon. We just talked for a second. It was cool to see him and hear him as opposed to just typing to him over facebook. It made the experience feel more personal and I liked that. This tool would be great for students to use if they were working on group projects and they aren't able to get together they can skype to each other and it's almost like they are in the same room together. Also if students have questions about their homework they can skype with each other to talk about it, or they can even skype with their teacher. The teacher can show examples over the internet and it is a lot easier to explain information and understand information when you can see and hear it. As a teacher you can also skype with your fellow teachers about ideas in the classroom about discipline, or just interesting topics to teach.

Web2.0 Tool Demo

The project I worked on was explaining a web2.0 so my classmates and myself will understand the different tools that are available. Vimeo.com is a web tool that allows you to upload videos and share them with whomever you choose. Within the presentation there are the features of Vimeo.com and how it can be used within a classroom.

My favoriate Web2.0 tools

Web2.0 is using the internet to teach students. The web is full of endless possibilities for students to learn and to grow together. It allows for the students to grow socially by providing a website that students can use to put their own thoughts or explain what they learned from a lesson and then they can get peer comments. Students can also work on a project together without being in the same room through the internet. It allows students to collaborate with each other through Google docs, by sending links and many of ways. It is easily accessible to most students as almost all schools and many homes have the internet and computers. The best part is that many Web2.0 tools can and are free for the students. :)
I looked into Dabbleboard and it is like a white board where you can post pictures and put arrows or write words and chat. There are so many different tools to use and it would be great to go over chemical reactions with the students, or give examples of experiments. It is a very fun and interesting tool!
I also looked into Doodle. It is a schedule where you can send questionnaires to students. I am in great need of finding a schedule that I like and fits my needs so it is interesting for me to play with this one. I am not sure how I feel about it yet but I do love how you can get responses from students about when they may be available or how they feel about a certain topic on a certain day.