Thursday, January 31, 2013

Blog Post # 1

About Me
Hi everyone, my name is Jasmine McCall. I was born in Mobile, Al and I currently reside in Semmes, Al. I am 24 years old and a junior at the University of South Alabama, where I am majoring in Elementary Education. I chose to attend South mainly because the university is close to my family. I have two wonderful loving parents and four siblings, one brother Hartford Jr. an electrical engineer and the father of my two nephews Xavier and Hartford III. I also have three sisters: Nikita, who is a sergeant in the army, Simone a photography major at the University of Montevallo, and Makayla whom is the mother of my beautiful two month old niece Kylee Rose. I chose to major in elementary education, because I have always had a passion for working with children. I want to be a role model and confidant for my future students. In my spare time I enjoy reading,doing latch and hook kits, and spending time with my wonderful niece. I have never been outside of Alabama, so I would love to experience and immerse myself in other cultures. In the future, I would love to travel to Barcelona, Catolonia, Spain.

My Future Classroom
My classroom will be a place where my students will feel comfortable expressing themselves and their creativity. I want my students to be motivated and have the ability to strive further in their quest for knowledge on their educational journey. One teaching method I plan on using would definitely be enthusiasm. My behavior will set the overall tone of the class, therefore I should model the same behavior I will expect from my students. Expressing my interest and excitement about what I am teaching will in turn have my students excited about what they are learning. I would also like to have learning centers and small groups set up in my classroom, this will provide my students a way to individually and cooperatively discuss and explore the concepts they have learned and to build effective communication skills.

Randy Pausch on Time Management
While watching the Randy Pausch video, I learned that "being successful doesn't make you manage your time well, but managing your time well makes successful". Having time management is great because if you manage your time correctly you can also have fun in life. I also learned that there three keys to time management: goals, priority, and planning. Mr.Pausch stated you must always have a plan, even though you may have to make changes to that plan. A plan is a great stepping stone. One should remember, when making a plan, he/she should break the plan down into smaller steps and start with the biggest, ugliest one first.In the video Mr.Pausch demonstrated another great way to manage time is to make a to do list. This particular To-Do list is known as the Covey four- quadrant to-do. When making to-do list.The first quadrant should be your due soon and important, and second should be important and due soon, the third should be not important and lastly your not important and not due soon quadrant.By creating this quadrant you will relieve the possibility of procrastination and also a huge amount of stress.

I learned that Mr. Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch was born on October 23,1960 in Baltimore,Maryland. He graduated from Oakland Mills High School which is located in Columbia. After graduating high school, Mr.Pausch went on to attend Brown University, where he received his bachelor's degree in computer science in May of 1982. Six years later,Mr.Pausch received his PH.D in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in August 1988.Later he became an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and developed the Building Virtual Worlds course, which he taught for ten years. In 2007, he was inducted into the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), where he received two awards for his achievements in computing education. In 2008, Pausch succumbed to his pancreatic cancer. He was survived by his wife and three kids: Dylan, Logan, and Chloe.Another thing I learned was that he never let his cancer get the best of him. You would have never known of his struggle with cancer because, he seemed to always have a smile on his face.