Blue 42

This was a very difficult assignment for me. It was not easy for me to come up with an assignment for a math class that would allow the students to get data to use in an Excel spreadsheet. So I settled on using a science experiment from Schneider, J. that I found on HOTCHALK.com so the students could gather the data to put into their Excel spreadsheets and then use what they learned from my previous math lesson to incorporate their data into graphs and charts.

It was very hard for me to come up with a lesson plan and activities for a science project because I teach math, not science. I had a hard time with the procedures and the science lingo. So, after staying up many late nights and utilizing many of the new search engines that have been recently introduced to me, I was very excited and proud of my lesson plan. And after many hours of painstakingly planning the activities the students would do in class, I think that my lesson plan applies quite nicely to the NETS*T Standard #1: Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity.

So, you can imagine my frustration when after spending many hours creating my lesson plan on Microsoft word, I was having having such a ridiculously hard time finding a website to create my own webpage on. After many hours of grueling work and trying to find a website that I could understand how to create my webpage on, I had gotten very discouraged. I was running into countless problems.... couldn't get the graphs to load, couldn't figure out how to get the pictures where I wanted them, etc.

I had tried to use Google Sites, MoonFruit, Webspawner, and Weebly. I stuck with Weebly the longest, but finally just couldn't get what I wanted on my page to happen. By about midnight on the day before the assignment is due, with no set web page, I sat at my computer and was ready to cry. My husband came over, rubbed my shoulders and said it will all be over soon and worth it in the end, so suck it up, man up and keep on trying until you find a site you can use.

After that I went into the Doodlekit site. There I was able to start working on a page that was allowing me to put in the elements I wanted. I was hooked. I stayed up until three o'clock that morning just trying to get everything into the site and tweak it to look good. The next day, I got up and of course went right back to my site. I finally figured out how to change the colors and background to fit my lesson plan. This was very fun to do. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about how to set up this webpage and personalize it to meet my tastes and personality.

When I came to class that afternoon, most of my classmates were talking about their webpages. The main website they were using was Weebly and they were also having problems. I was so proud to show them my site and what I had done. After that, one of my classmates actually opened a Doodlekit account and started a new web page for himself because of what I had shown him could be done there. Then he asked why my webpage was named Blue 42. I told him that in my household Blue 42 means "man up". When I was ready to cry and give up, I didn't. I manned up, found a good site and got it all done. So I named my site to represent all the hard work and frustration that I had overcome and that went into building it and to show that in the end, no matter what, the task can always be bone....Blue 42.

NETS for Teachers 2008. (2008). Retrieved June 11, 2010, from International Society for Technology in Education: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standard/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm

Schneider, J. (n.d.). GROWING SEASON. RetrievedJune 11, 2010, from HOTCHALK: http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ScienceExTempGravityAffectSeedGerminationMO68.htm

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