Well it is exam time once again! I haven't done exams for nearly two years so I am pretty nervous about these ones coming up. They are now just over a week away and my revision is slowly coming along! I am using the site https://bubbl.us/ to create mind maps for revision. It is quite helpful and means I can see the whole of a topic on one page. I am also going to put my mind map into wordle to create a collage of the words to be able to highlight the most important points. Overall I hope my exams go well and that I manage to get all my revision done!
Twitter is a social networking site created
in 2006 that enables users to post messages to their followers called tweets.
As of 2012 there are over 500 million registered users, sending over 340
million tweets per day.
With Twitter being one of the ten
most visited websites on the internet, there are many pros As well as cons.
Twitter is good for keeping in touch
with your friends and making new friends over the internet. However this could
be dangerous as anyone could be behind a twitter profile and you don’t know who
they actually are. This is why privacy laws are in place, but they can only
protect the privacy of someone if they put their profile in private, otherwise
anyone can view and follow it.
Twitter is also good for keeping up
to date with the news. Any big news story is usually trending and you can click
on it and see what has happened and also what they views of people are on the
situation. This is also good for any businesses that want to market something
as they can get it trending and then millions of people will see it.
The major con of using Twitter or in
fact any social networking website is that excessive use can lead to
detrimental outcomes on both mental and physical health.
With the weather outside being all snowy, lectures being cancelled and It being pretty tricky to even leave campus we decided to make cakes. As we already had all the ingredients we decided to make peanut butter fudge. First we melted the butter and added the milk and sugar. Then we boiled it and added in the peanut butter and icing sugar. After, we put it into the tray and it is now sitting in the fridge cooling down. Once it has cooled down we are going to cut it into squares and share it with the floor. All we have to do now is wait!
Halloween was well and truly one of the best days I have had at university. We had a big party on our floor and decorated the halls. We managed to cover the lights with tin foil and poke holes in the foil to create a eerie look. The walls had spiders and red paint on them to make it look scary and we put toilet paper dangling from the ceiling to make it look spooky.
People from other floor came up to join in the party and we blasted music out for many of the rooms. Later on we left halls to go into town and carry on the Halloween party.
We went to Oceana for their Halloween themed night. It was pretty packed and that made for a great night. This Halloween was by far the best I have had and I hope that next Halloween is just as great!
I have been at university for 5 months now and it has honestly been some of the best months of my life! It has been a great experience and one I will take with me for the rest of my life. I have made some amazing friends and they have become more like family now.
At the beginning I was slightly nervous to be living hundreds of miles away from home with people I had never met, but the more time I spend with everyone on my floor, the more I began to feel at home.
Freshers week was fun and I met lots of new people who were doing my course. I got to discover Swansea and the clubs and shops.
I also got the taste of what the nightlife was like in Swansea, and since freshers I have had some of the best nights of my life out in the town.
Living in halls has been an interesting experience. In my opinion I live on the best floor out of all the halls: J FLOOR! Our whole floor is lovely and everyone gets along.
Our floor is the most lively floor out of halls and so at times can be pretty noisy, but I think that is what makes living in halls special. The challenge of living in halls is the mess. There is often food on the hallway floor and mess pretty much everywhere because of our antics when we're bored.
I am enjoying my time at university and the people I have met. I am enjoying my educational studies course and the information I am learning that will help me to become a teacher. I have met the most amazing friends, and I am looking forward to spending the next three years with them.
Wordle is a website that allows you to create a mind map of words out of a chunk of writing, like an essay or PowerPoint. It processes your text and puts all the main points and words together to form a word cloud. The words that are more frequent in the text appear bigger. You can change the font, layouts and colour schemes to suit your preference. Once you create a Wordle you can print it, send to friends or save to the Wordle gallery.
Wordle can be used in an educational context by helping aid revision. You can put a whole essay in and it will bring out the main points from it. It is particularly good for people who struggle to revise by just reading notes, as it brings all the important points together to make it easier. Wordle is good for visual learners as they can see the image of all the points they need to revise. It can also be used in classrooms to create word clouds on different topics. It helps children to focus on the main points of a subject and be able to see which the most important things to remember are.
I chose to follow this blog because it gives and insight and great ideas on how to use learning though play in the classroom. Learning though play is a major priority in classrooms in primary schools and this blog helps to inspire ideas to teach children. It has different tabs that have different ideas and posts. Two tabs that i liked the most were the ‘It’s Playtime’ and ‘Play Outside’. The It’s Playtime tab has posts in it about playful learning and a button so you can link it up to your blog and get the weekly updates. The Play Outside tab contains resources on things to do with children outside to help them learn. It gives fun, stimulating and adventurous ideas that you can read about and use when teaching children.
The blog also has a newsletter that you can subscribe to, to get all the amazing ideas monthly. It has buttons to their facebook page, twitter and pineterest, so you can follow their blog on other sites as well.
Overall this blog is great. It is easy to find your way around and the information it contains is useful and interesting and will help when I am looking for ideas on how to teach children though play.
http://progressiveearlychildhoodeducation.blogspot.co.uk/
Can't believe its the second term already, its gone so quickly.
Everyone is now well and truly settled in and become a family!
Halls have quietened down too, J floor is no longer loud all the time. This is mainly down to everyone doing assignments and studying for January exams.
Lectures have begun again and revision is truly underway!
Nothing like being welcomed back to uni with exams.
This was our first Christmas at university and it was amazing!!
Halls looked awesome as they were all decorated, and we had a big J floor Christmas party.
Mark Bezos: A life lesson from a volunteer firefighter
This is a TED talk by Mark Bezos.
This talk is inspiring and uplifting, it encourages everyone to help others whenever they get the opportunity. Mark talks about how just a simple act of kindness can become heroic and another person’s eyes. This is shown when he lady whose house was on fire noted the act of kindness above all others was that someone had gone into the house and got her a pair of shoes
Part of the talk that inspired me was the part where mark says “Don’t wait until you make your first million to make a difference in somebody’s life. If you have something to give, give it now” This inspires people to help others because no matter how big or small an acted of kindness is, it still has a profound effect on the person who was helped.
Mark also quotes that “not every day is going to offer us a chance to save somebody’s life, but every day offers us an opportunity to affect one” I feel that this is a quote that should be taken through life with everyone. If you ever have the chance to help anyone you should take it, you don’t have to save someone’s life to be a hero to them! http://www.ted.com/
They are now just over a week away and my revision is slowly coming along! I am using the site https://bubbl.us/ to create mind maps for revision. It is quite helpful and means I can see the whole of a topic on one page.
I am also going to put my mind map into wordle to create a collage of the words to be able to highlight the most important points. 
