I just wanted to share that I really miss the Aboriginal Perspective on things. I miss helping First Nations children feel good and knowledgeable about who they are, and where they come from. At the high school it is extremely difficult to engage the Cree and Dene students because they are only a small percentage of the population. This is certainly the case for my classes. A lot of Metis students in attendance. At least one is confused about who they are; I know this because of how the student quietly ridiculed the ways of being Cree. I can only hope to model that being from both worlds is a real good thing. Or else I fear that some may grow up feeling and being only half of who they are. I know my journey has only started.

In a classroom with 30 plus diverse students, it is impossible to give each student an amount of time that he or she truly deserves. To alleviate this concern in lieu of my struggling few, I am keen to frequently check with the targeted learner's progress with the lesson. I think of my kids in terms of ratios I must use to keep each learner moving along with the lesson. For instance there are a few students who will need three or four checks or corrections per step in the lesson. Others might only need one check or correction during the lesson. This distribution has been my experience while at RD Parker. Regardless, at some point during the early part of the lesson I make sure to acknowledge each student by letting them know I am happy to see them and to thank them when they are on time; tardiness is a real issue. This is despite anticipatory activities like a quick review of last day's lesson. Perhaps more weight can be applied to the marks given for the anticipatory 'carrot'. Most likely my carrots were not sweet enough. Next time I will have to adopt better ways of capturing student attention.

My Mentor Mandy Womboldt is a grand veteran. She is a most responsive teacher who practices differentiated instruction in the classroom. In the classroom there are three people with different learning needs. One student is supposed to be in the EBD Support Classroom but there was no funding to hire a resource teacher for one student. So my Mentor was charged with addressing the learning needs of someone with severe ADHD and OCD. These might be nothing more than labels because there does exist some speculation about whether or not the conditions actually continue to manifest or if they are some sort of 'crutch' the student relies on. While this last remark reflects what teachers discuss to understand the learning needs of individual students, it is ultimately a conjecture and not in any way some vain attempt at diagnosis. I realize that as teachers we are not licensed psychologists so in no way am I remotely making some kind of claim.

At every turn I have tried to incorporate the advice my Mentor has proffered. The language of her tutelage is forwardly plain but tactically and strategically advantageous. For example, she as given me keenness for cutting my evening workload. During our study of the novel, Of Mice and Men, my "Novel Pack" was a series of vocabulary and comprehension questions for each chapter. With six chapters the "Novel Pack" weighed in at being out of 531 marks! "Too many to count," is what my Mentor said. She advised me that such a workload would lead to teacher fatigue or burnout in a very short while. Being keen to a long career of teaching I elected to trim my assignments. And despite such modifications to my procedure I am still charged with marking at least 50 pieces of student work each night. On top of this there is planning to be done. So I have been required to spend many late night hours learning how to help people learn how to learn. I do not regret any of it. I love always thinking about my next step. I hope that with time I will get as efficient at managing workload as my Mentor. I know that it will take me a long time to get as proficient as her at teaching.

There are only two days left and a whole future ahead for me and my family. I just wanted to share with you that I have been listening all this time. For the past two years I have enjoyed your wisdom and experience with teaching. I think the one real lesson you taught me--among a plenitude of others--was that I really needed to be a listener rather than always the one who speaks. Thank you, Dr. Firman, for tempering my edge.

For Buddy, I just wanted to say that your philosophies have taught me to love myself. It is through your teachings have I become whole again. How do you repay someone for that kind of gift?

Thank you--both of you--for all your support and guidance along the way.

Yours truly,

Leighton Wensley

DIGITAL ASSIGNMENTS

Image 1: Yearbook title page
Image 2: Wall Tent Comedy Sketch title page
Image 3: Kenanow Digital Storyboard
Image 4: "F&ST" Service Learning Project
Image 5: "Winter in the Forest" Service Learning Project


Special thanks must be extended to our Nelson House peers because of their fantastic sunset shot. It has been used as the back drop for Image 5. I hope everyone enjoys my attempt at comedy. And I hope no one portrayed is offended. :)

EVOLUTION

WOLVES SITTING LIKE A TEEPEE

LATEST AND FINAL SO FAR :)

TEachers and Students in a circle.

WOLVES AND PUPS / TEACHER AND STUDENTS

I still have room for a picture of your trappers tent. the disc Suzie gave me is empty. a picture with the logo would be awesome.

OR WITH WOLVES WARMING THEIR BACKS?

You must choose. :)

IMPROVED UPON

The black is for text!

GEO-CACHE COORDINATES IN THOMPSON

HELLO EVERYONE!

Ever heard of Thompson Spirit Way? It is a website with GPS coordinates for Thompson Wolves in and around town. This information can be used to set up a 'GEO-CACHE' activity.

http://www.thompsonspiritway.ca/

TITLE PAGE FOR GRAD BROCHURE

HELLO EVERYONE!

Here is my idea for our graduation title page. Buddy said eight of us are graduating; so I have chosen eight wolves from in and around thompson. I hope you like it. Please give me information regarding what title you want to put on it. Like what is our program called anyways? lol. Please send me your banner ideas. Thank you.

Leighton

Is there charm twice over?

Second link posting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKgQNvK4D8Y

Depeche mode, always a good listen. this song is powerful. Its mad and its sad. I used to think these guys were poets. I hope you enjoy.

Linkage

Posting a Link!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNrbiZoKQLU

Teaching and the Law.

I found some deep reading for those interested. It is about teaching and the law. There are some examples of cases that you might find interesting. it is from Canada and talks about how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms both allows us to do certain things, and by virtue of our students being citizens as well, they too get rights that guide our teaching. This kind of information is important for our professional success. Treat it as an analysis of our teacher code of conduct. I remember reading lots of legal treatises when I was in philosophy. Its good stuff if you got a stomach for it.

http://www.mun.ca/educ/ed4361/virtual_academy/campus_a/alegal.html

What is Data Sonification?

WHAT IS DATA SONIFICATION?

"Sonification
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sonification is the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data. Due to the specifics of auditory perception, such as temporal and pressure resolution, it forms an interesting alternative to visualization techniques, gaining importance in various disciplines. It has been well established for a long time already as Auditory Display in situations that require a constant awareness of some information (e.g. vital body functions during an operation). Sonification as a method for exploration of data and scientific modeling is a current and ongoing research desideratum.

One of the first successful applications of sonification is the well-known Geiger counter, a device measuring ionizing radiation. The number and frequency of audible clicks are directly dependent on the radiation level in the immediate vicinity of the device."

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF DATA SONIFICATION IS THE WARNING ALARM A PILOT HEARS WHEN A MISSILE IS LOCKED ON AND APPROACHING. BUT HERE IS THE LINK TO THE ARTICLE:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonification

What is Aura lnformation?

WHAT IS AURAL INFORMATION? HERE IS ONE ANSWER I FOUND:

"Applications
Aural Information Display

Aural displays increase information display bandwidth, promote recognition of subtle or transient information that might be overlooked in a visual display, promote attention redirection to more dynamic or interesting regions of the data, and help to preserve viewer spatial orientation when traversing large and abstract datasets.


Heighten situational awareness
Reduce information overload by using aural cues
Intuitively present location-dependent information
Offload the visual system
Reduce or eliminate the need for specialized display technology such as an HMD (head-mounted display)
Allow the eyes to be focused on the task at hand while the user still receives alerts, messages, task guidance


Advantages of Auralization
Visual representation is limited in the number of independent dimensions of a dataset that it can simultaneously represent. In addition to spatial dimensions and a temporal dimension, a few other properties are available such as color, texture, and symbology, but these are limited in number and quickly exhausted when highly-dimensional, complex, and layered datasets are represented. By integrating a 3D aural representation to the data display, a significant number of additional dimensions can be simultaneously employed, sonified by properties such as pitch, duration, volume, timbre, and propagation properties. By adding to the number of dimensions that may be simultaneously observed during data mining and analysis, data sonification provides additional information bandwidth, thus increasing perception, recognition, and comprehension of the information hidden with a dataset.

The visual system and the auditory system have complementary strengths in data display. While visual displays can provide extremely high resolution depictions of selected local areas or datasets, identifying the interesting regions for scrutiny in a very large dataset is always a challenge. Visual strategies for attacking this problem include increasing the visual display area, increasing the data display rate, coding data of greater interest with brighter colors, etc. However, even these strategies are often insufficient – a single pixel can easily be overlooked, especially in a time-varying display. Aural scanning, alternately, can be better suited for detecting subtle or transient data, as the aural sense can scan all spatial directions simultaneously without being limited to a single focal point, and can detect data features of very short temporal duration more easily and intuitively.

Because humans have the ability to hear in all directions at once, spatial auralization is a compelling strategy for supporting attention attraction and redirection. This allows larger quantities of data to be scanned more quickly, with attention being properly guided to the most interesting local areas of the display on a continuous basis. Even though a data auralization can stand on its own with no visual display, we believe it can significantly enhance visual displays, and allow participants to perceive more of the displayed information. Although in recent years significant advances have been made in virtual-reality (VR) visual immersion and visual display technology, such as head-mounted displays (HMD’s) and cave automatic virtual environments (CAVE’s) that allow spatial traversal of high-resolution 3D data, spatial orientation can be better achieved and translational movement can be better perceived when multiple sensory systems are presented with coordinated stimuli. Data visualizations can be so abstract that a viewer can lose his or her understanding of place within the dataset, when deprived of matching kinesthetic and aural cues. Aural senses allow the cues of traversal and perspective changes to be significantly reinforced.

An additional advantage of an aural display is that it supports and complements any first-person perspective visual display technology, and is not limited to any specific visual technology, such as desktop displays, CAVE’s projection walls, or HMD’s, and it will most likely be compatible with future visual display technologies as well.

Example Application: Dismounted Soldier
Soldiers in combat need as much information as possible to remain safe and perform their assigned tasks. The best possible explanation of the need for better communications is seen in the motion picture Blackhawk Down. As more body armor is added, as well as protection against chemical and biological attacks, war fighters can become isolated from their surroundings.

The addition of a wearable vectorized audio system, combined with wearable communications and control systems, provides the wearer with a broad range of advanced capabilities . . . "


NOW YOU KNOW WHY STORMTROOPERS WEAR HELMETS WITH ADVANCED COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY! ANYWAYS, HERE IS THE LINK:


http://www.ausim3d.com/apps/AuWeb_AID.html

My Very First Blog

Just getting started. There are many advantages and disadvantages to technology in the classroom. But I am of the persuasion that technolgy is a good thing for improving the quality of the learning experience.

Let us begin by each submitting one advantage and one disadvantage of technology in the classroom. Please would yall do this for me? I will start.

Advantage:
Exponentially increases access to information resources for student learning.

Disadvantage:
Can lead to a dependence on flashy media presentations that lack curricular substance.

HERE IS THE LINK TO A RELATED ARTICLE:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPJQgFIUGuo