The Power of Advertisements

Flappy Bird. Do I need to say much more? Whether you have an addiction to the game or missed out on downloading it before its removal from the app store, I have a pretty good feeling you know what it is.

The attention this game has gotten blows my mind. I'm not a huge gamer to begin with but the concept of this game does not peak my interest whatsoever...there's no winning! It seems that everyone around me of all ages is in on the craze and frequently post their high scores on social media showing off to their friends. I often joke to those who play the game that I'm going to play duck hunt with Flappy Bird..... (Possible idea for a new app!?)

With all the hype around the app there's been much discussion on how much money the creator of it was making on ads every day. Ads! Which leads me to thinking about how many advertisements we’re exposed to every day in the media. Use an app on your phone, watch a YouTube video, go on Facebook or twitter, turn on the TV, open a newspaper or magazine- paper copy or online etc…we are surrounded by them. Because they are everywhere are we desensitized to them? Or are they subliminally catching our attention and are the drive behind why we do and buy certain products? Take notice of where the ads are, who they’re targeting and how they’re targeting them. How often have you seen a funny commercial or advertisement and had to share it with a friend? How many stories have you heard from someone ordering something they really don’t need or want based on the commercial “sucking them in”? During the Super bowl, it cost 3.5 million dollars for 30 seconds of commercial time, they are the some of the most watched commercials.

So, just for fun, I want you to take notice of what advertisements pop up around you that you otherwise wouldn’t have noticed, who’s exposed to them, who they’re targeting and how they’re doing it….I’m sure you’ll be surprised!

Philosophy of Education

In a couple of my classes we are being asked to reflect upon our Philosophy of Education. Why we educate, what is important, what we hope to accomplish, why we do what we do etc. In creating this, I did not want to get stuck in a long winded essay mentioning every single thing I hope to achieve. I wanted to mention a few broad key points that having meaning to me and that I believe to be vital in my responsibilities as an educator. So here is what I came up with. My Philosophy of Education...

I believe that each student is a unique individual that has their own motivations, interests and goals. As a teacher, my responsibility is to provide these students with the opportunity to discover themselves, their surroundings and the interactions around them and to construct knowledge that is meaningful and relevant to their life and interests.

It is important to provide a safe, respectful environment that is inviting of new ideas. Feeling safe and respected and giving respect creates a dynamic of comfort among one another to share ideas, feelings and thoughts. Student input is crucial to a successful classroom. Developing lessons and units with student input has them become invested in what they are learning and in turn they become more motivated to reach goals.

Students need to have compassionate, strong, and dedicated individuals who are excited about working with them. Children are our future, and they all have the potential to bring something new to the world. It is my goal as an educator to assist students in reaching their highest potential.

Useful Websites

Within the last few weeks in my ICT class we've been creating a number of mini projects and i'm learning about a few websites that do some pretty neat things. I want to share them with you!

www.weebly.com This website allows you to create your own website. It has a very straight forward set up and there's many templates to choose from that you can customise to your liking. I've recently had to set up a classroom website using weebly. You can check it out at www.discoverourclass.weebly.com I am also in the middle of creating an eportfolio using Weebly as well.

www.animoto.com This website makes it extremely easy to put together an animated slide show video. For class I created one on my family's trip to Las Vegas you can check it out at
http://animoto.com/play/qtcaux70l5Fg2vChml2LIg or just scroll down to the bottom of my blog to watch it!

www.pixlr.com and www.ipiccy.com/ are both photo editing sites with more options than you'd know what to do with. It was pretty amazing to play around with them and see what I could do!

www.compfight.com You can find tons of pictures and clip art here and all the necessary info you'd need for editing and photo credit. I used this site for a few of the pictures on my classroom website.

www.prezi.com A cool way to make presentations that is different from the traditional slides. I recommend checking it out!

www.wordle.net is a site to make unique word clouds. If you go to my classroom website the word cloud on the homepage is made using wordle.

I found these websites all fairly straight forward and easy to use. I can definitely see ways of incorporating them into the classroom. I really enjoyed creating all these projects and the ease of them makes its fun to do! I recommend trying some of them out!