From Florida...

My goodness! So my family Florida vacation comes to an end...it was an exciting week full of all 4 Disney parks, Universal Studios, Island of Adventures, and tonights culmination...party hopping at Universal's CityWalk (my favorite stop was the dueling pianos at Pat O'Brien's)! In between there were a few laps in the pool, a few beverages in the hot tub, and of course, a few logins to WebCT. Needless to say, I'm EXHAUSTED! But, I tried my best to check out some of the classes' digital stories...unfortunately the connection here at the resort was ify, so I hope to view them all once I return to Jersey tomorrow (or later today I should say as I look at the time!). From the comments and reactions posted they sound great and I look forward to seeing them!

Well, its kinda late and I have a fun day of packing and traveling tomorrow, so I'm off to bed! Hopefully I will have something more substantial to contribute next week!

Oh, but before I forget...my last posting was me basically complaining about how hard it was to find images for my digital story...well UPDATE: I was able to find almost all of what I needed using creative commons sources. Flickr was a lifesaver. And in my searches I also found Wikimedia Commons, which could be very helpful for students...check it out at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Frustration...

So I'm trying to finish my digital story project before I go on my family vacation next week...BUT I'm finding it difficult to find creative commons photographs! I had originally searched for all of my photos on Google Images, but then Dr. Z reminded me about public domain and creative commons. My question is, how did all these OTHER people who had the pictures posted on their sites (so that I was able to find them on Google) gain access to the photos?!
Now, its such a frustrating process to find images that are comparable to the ones I originally pictured in my head! If I can't find a picture of Salvador Dali's "Persistence of Memory" that falls into public domain or that is shared under creative commons, what can I use to take its place in my presentation?! And if I'm having such a tough time, how are my kids supposed to complete the project?!
Reading about the copyright laws has not been any help because they all have so many variations! "The copyright has expired if it falls under circumstances A, B, C, and D, AND even then, only if the author has eaten peanut butter and jelly for lunch more than twice in his or her lifetime." Check it out...it's crazy!
http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/public_domain/

GREs...yikes!

I know this blog is a night late, but this week has been crazy and to be completely honest I overlooked adding this weeks post until just NOW! Why was my week so crazy you ask?! Well, I took my GREs today. I JUST registered for them on Monday ...long story not so short, I thought we could take 15 credits as a conditional student and ends up you can only take 12 and this course will provide my 12th! PLUS I had already registered and paid for my 15th credit this fall! Not knowing what to do I contacted Dr. T and am trying to speed through the process of getting approved for matriculation! My plan was to take the test later in August so I had time to prepare, but the only available appointment for the month was today! ::breath:: SOOOO, things have been crazy and I have been spending every night trying to brush up on my math and vocab ;-) I won't go into too much detail about how I did... lets just leave it as I am disappointed with my Verbal performance, but was impressed with my Quantitative skills!

For some reason, I have never really been successful when it comes to vocabulary and grammar. Just to give you some idea...my high school English AP teacher told me I had the grammar of a third grader (how I got into English AP I will never know!)! I am always one of those people who is quadruple checking my papers, essays, and even postings before I submit them. My best friends during college and thus far in grad school have been the dictionary and thesaurus! So it didn't come as a complete shock when I saw that I did a lot better on the math! But hopefully my total score will be good enough to keep me in the program with all you lovely people...keep your fingers crossed for me!

I'm not really gonna post on anything Ed. Tech related right now...I'm kinda drained. I guess you could just check out the webquest that my group and I completed this week if you haven't already! http://questgarden.com/68/54/9/080719093045/

Till next time...