From Bad to Good

We drove out the mouth of the ship along with a few hundred other cars, a handful of campers and some semi trucks. Amazing what they fit on one level of a ship!

I was excited to finally be in Norway! A piece of my past, my heritage. I grew up listening to stories about this country, cooking and eating recipes from here and doing traditions from here. And, we were starting the day with shopping!!! I quickly discovered that my heritage is expensive and freezing cold. Walking through the first few shops I quickly got discouraged. Even my mom got discouraged and walked out with nothing (highly abnormal, if you know my mother). The little trolls that I wanted were $50. A thin sweatshirt you can buy in America for twenty bucks, was $100! A nice sweater, that would actually keep me warm, was $600. I choked every time I looked at a price tag and did the math. The cheapest thing I saw all morning was 49 kroner, which is $10. Most things were in the hundreds of kroner.

We decided to give up and go eat lunch. Bad mistake! We showed up at good old McDonalds thinking about the normal prices. We were wrong. A cheeseburger meal was $17. Ouch! I lost my appetite real quick. we ended up at a pizza buffet. I won't tell you how much but the pizza was not even close to worth it. I miss Pizza Pie Cafe :(

We then added to our disappointment by finding out that it cost to much per person to take a tram up the mountain to see the view. Everything was discouraging! My mom wasn't feeling good, so we took her back and while she was asleep, the four others of us headed out of town to find better priced food at a grocery store.

Have you ever noticed how much you actually read the containers your food comes in. I never did until I was trying to decipher Norwegian on a box. Is this soft or hard butter? Skim or Whole Milk? Ham, Bologna, Sausage, Turkey? The best was trying to figure out which of the many different kinds of cheese was closest to cheddar. And imagine doing that all in another language when you cant taste any of it. Well... Success!!! We'll be eating sandwiches the rest of our journey, but at least we can afford to eat.

To make the day even better we found Krunsekake!!! For those of you who don't know what that is, its Norwegian Wedding cake. It was in the freezer section. I know its weird to have wedding cake when not at a wedding but I told my family it served multiple purposes. One, because I missed out tasting my Aunts awesome homemade version at my cousins wedding just a few weeks ago. Two, because we needed dessert after dinner. Three, because it would make me feel better about my life from this past year (my one year anniversary in particular). Four, because it would make my mom feel better. Also, it's just amazing to find it in a grocery store like that!




So we ended the night much better than the rest of the day. Playing Cards and eating Krunsekake :D Yum!

- Me (Elisha)

Location:Bergen, Norway

Beginnings to a Journey

I know I'm not the best writer, so you'll have to bear with me. This is really part journal and part for entertainment for those of you who know my family and I best.

My family picked me up from South Port, England on Wednesday. We took a plane to Copenhagen, Denmark. I was sad to leave the team but excited to see new parts of Europe. I ran into some team girls in the airport and they told me there was a huge problem with my bag that morning and the airport. I had asked about a month before we left if we could send our bag with our tour clothes home and the answer I thought I got was a yes. Apparently I was wrong. As I did not go to the airport with the team and I just sent my bag with them, I guess they had to separate my things into a bunch of different peoples a tuff so they could have an extra bag and weight. Bless my dear friend who kept track of it all. But those of you who know me should know that when I found out Lee was mad that it even happened in the first place, I freaked out the rest of the day. But I know what many of you would say, there was nothing I could do about it anymore. (I still sent him an apologetic text, And to all this who helped take care of my stuff... thanks!)




I got to see my families hotel in Liverpool and needless to say it was nice. They always stay in the nicest places without me. My first night with them I stay in an all white hotel that was a mix between an IKEA do it yourself kit and a cell with padded walls :) the bedding and towels had been vacuum packed and left there for me to make the bed myself. And it had bunk beds three tiers high! But it was an adventure that turned out well.


Thursday morning we loaded the car and pulled up to a ship. Well...we pulled into the mouth of a ship. The front had been lifted up and we drove onto it. It was like a one day, non all inclusive and not as nice cruise ship. The first thing we noticed was that we should have bought food to take on the ship as the cheapest meal cost $20. We wasted time playing good North American Family card games (Wyoming Rummy, Canadian Fruit Salad and Phase Ten). After declining an invite for drinks we went to bed on our fold down bunk beds. The difficulty there, five adults and four twin size beds. Yay!

I'll stop here and do a new post for Bergen :)


- Me (Elisha)

Location:England to Copenhagen

Discovery Park!

First, A message for Tye and Tara:



Today we took Tessa and Trevin to Discovery Park. It just so happens that my mom and I have never been there either, so it was an adventure for all who were involved. It was an amazing all wood park, and it was HUGE!

Tessa and Trevin loved it :)



Trevin found a door just his size, then he and Tessa became Astronauts and Worker Bees:





Good thing Trevin learned in sunbeams yesterday that worker bees were good guys that give us honey. After that, Trevin became King of the tires as G.G. gave him a challenge to stay on. Tessa found a big wooden dinosaur head.




We ended up our park excursions with this thing that spun real fast. Tessa only fell off of it once. But they loved it and then G.G. and the grandkids found a big Xylophone to play with.




What a fun day. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Reflections

At the beginning of this class I was scared. I have never claimed to be a technologically smart person and taking a technology class I thought i would fail.

Though I have not shown it, I can honestly say that this is the class I have recieved the most benefit from. As a current teacher at BYU I am already using technology that I have discovered through this class. I will admit that some I will use more than others. But all of it was good information.

I found the most benefit from the iMovie assignment to make my own video. I have always had students ask me to post movies for a review but I never had until now. It was more simple than i ever thought it would be. Then I used what I had learned to make a video for my company and we created a flash mob. We only met and practiced twice before the actual event, they had learned the whole thing from a video I made. I used multiple things we have learned in class. I created a movie with iMovie, created a blog for the ballroom dance team at BYU, I used Youtube to post the video on the internet, and I embeded it into the blog. All of these things I did not know how to do before this class and they all benefitted 170 peopl on the team. I can't explain the pride I felt having of completed such a task.

You can watch the instuctional video for the flashmob if you want below...



or the actual flashmob event...



I have been inspired from discussion in person with my fellow dance ed major peers who took this class. We had good discussions but its easy to see how I was inspired by them if you watch Kelli Thredgolds video she did for her project.

This class was a blessing to me and I hope to continue to learn about technology and spread my knowledge to my students.

WikiSpaces

I added my lesson plan about viddler on wikispaces here

I wish I could have added more to the blog part but out of the five google reader groups i joined earlier in the semester, none of them have been worthwhile. I love other future dance educators ideas and am planning on subscribing to ones they have found.

Sharing about Internet safety

I tried to share with my sister, just 4 years shy of my age, some of the things I have learned. It didn't go over as well as I would have thought but it presented some challenges I might face when I present Internet Safety to students.

- I presented how much her common used screenname says about her, some of which is not true. My sister has a similar name to beaver8787. The name beaver to some has a sexual meaning though the person may just actually love the animal. Then 8787 could be the birthday 8/7/1987. My sisters reaction was one of anger though. She said she is not going to just go and change all her e-mails and screennames because others are dumb. Something I had not thought of and have't decided how to combat that if I had a student bring that up. Hopefully they woudln't have that much to change.

- I presented the fact that she could limit her profiles more and she said that takes to much work. Work compared to safety is of the greatest value. She seemed in a hurry and already shutdown but I hope if I keep working with her we can become a safer Internet family.

Internet Safety

I watched Videos from ilearn.isafe.org and I read the article "Finding and Sharing the Gospel Online" in the Ensign, Oct. 2009

1. From the readings/videos- I never realized how much a person can narrow down your personal information from even just your screen name and I must admit I have been guilty of putting to much personal info in that as well as many of my friends. Some of the videos on here were not so great and others really helped me to see just how easy it is for a predator to pin down my exact location. One of the best things i learned is iruleit.net where you can make different versions for your profile and it protects your identity more. From the readings I learned that it is Internet communication is a great way to share the gospel but even in there it talked about being safe and meeting in groups with some people that you already know if others are not people you previously know. It is also important to constantly sound professional on the Internet, even if its a social networking site.

2. I definitely feel more prepared as a teacher and parent to teach and encourage Internet safety in numerous ways. I would encourage all my students to watch their profile information, including names, birth dates, location, etc. I know more of what to watch for and now am equipped with video and stories to back my precautions.

3. My family didn't even realize how much personal info they had just given away until I talked to them. They are now more aware of this and can present themselves better on the Internet while also protecting themselves more.

4. I was aware of the crime cyber bullying but I did not know that was the official name for it. Even TV shows have hit on the dangers of cyber bullying and how it can affect a students life. To prevent it as a teacher I could encourage only letting best friends and family have access to your full profile. People from class or others should only have very limited access to the profile. Also, teach of the dangers cyberbullying and how it can affect lives.

5. For teaching I really liked iLearn.Isafe.org It had several videos about different challenges we may face and some ways to avoid vulnerability on the Internet.

6. I feel as a teacher I will face after math of cyberbullying, hence why i want to teach about it.

7. I hope that I can establish a safe learning environment. I would like to have a day or two set aside where we go to a computer lab and set up their limited profiles on identity.net and then we can discuss what site should get which profile. Since I could possibly use some internet site that would require my students to set up profiles I would need to help encourage internet safety not just on social sites. As a dance teacher I could tell them how to set up a secondary e-mail that will forward to their other e-mail to hopefully avoid spaming.