FACS Professional Development - Summer 2010

The 12-Month Pregnancy Workshop
The Colorado March of Dimes presented a workshop at the FACS summer professional development on June 17, 2010. The focus of the workshop was to familiarize teachers with a new curriculum, “The 12-Month Pregnancy”. Attendees were presented with a hard copy of the curriculum in a three ring notebook, but the entire curriculum is available on line at www.marchofdimes.com/colorado and includes additional links. The presenters outlined the curriculum, explained the 12-month concept and simulated some student activities. The curriculum includes the following units: prenatal development and care, the father’s role in pregnancy, pregnancy information, labor and delivery and preterm birth. Each unit has many pages of current articles and information and student activities for use in the classroom.

I plan to put some of these student activities to use in my classroom:

Birth Defects: Students are divided into small groups and at least one student in each group is given a “birth defect” such as glasses with gel, ear plugs, a blind fold, loss of speech, etc. The student is then given a task to complete while experiencing the “disability”. Students then discuss how they felt with the “birth defect” and how those around them reacted.

Pregnancy Weight Gain Activity: A student is chosen to put on an empty back pack and as the instructor discusses weight gain in pregnancy (3 pounds of blood, 2 pounds of amniotic fluid, 7.5 pounds of baby, etc), zip lock bags of each weight in sand are added to the back pack until it totals 29 pounds.

Preterm Births: As the lesson begins, have students count off and each eighth person stands showing that one out of every eight births is premature. Have all students put a coffee straw in their mouth and inhale and exhale only through the straw. Students are told this is what it is like for a preterm baby to breathe when the lungs are not fully developed.

The most impactful portion of the workshop was called “Voices of Illumination”. Three parents who have had preterm babies told their stories. Randy Reese and his wife told about the birth of their preterm daughter who tragically died 8 days after birth. He detailed the importance of the father in the situation. Kristen Baucum’s daughter was also born premature and spent time in the hospital before maturing into the healthy preschooler she is today. Kathryn Marshall told of her daughter’s preterm birth that resulted in special needs. She honestly shared her own fear and guilt, as well as the impact of raising a special needs child on the family dynamics and finances.

I encourage anyone who has a unit or course on pregnancy to visit www.marchofdimes.com/colorado.


"Wonderful World of Web 2.0" FACS Workshop
Wonderful World of Web 2.0 professional development class was held on June 15, 2010 at Rock Canyon High School. The course covered a variety of online tools. We saw digital poster makers that can use video and sound, online presentation makers that are easy and visually stunning, and online discussion forums that can be accessed from a computer or even a cell phone. These tools allow students and teachers to interact and collaborate during the creation and evaluation process. We went over the new state technology evaluation requirements for students and teachers.

The instructors were great: Ed Watterson a science and technology teacher, was in the classroom for years and is now an IT support person for the classroom teachers in his building. I wish we had the resources to have a person like that in our school. He was very knowledgeable. The other instructor was Ashley Tussing, a social studies and language arts teacher who uses all types of technology in her classroom and was able to give hands on information for the tools we looked at.

Some of the new web tools we were exposed were:
Multimedia tools: GoAnimate for creating your own animations (see the lesson plan that tells how you might use this for a teen pregnancy ad) and Masher for mixing pictures and video clips (from their library)

Prezi is a presentation tool which makes Power Point look like a dinosaur. It is a digital canvas that allows you to put many words in different sizes and then you can attach more information that the viewer can read when they click on the word. It would take some practice to be able to use this.

Social Discussion sites such as Wall wisher, which is a web page that allows many students to post on a common topic and Food Network Recipe Box that is a digital storehouse for favorite recipes and it allows you to categorize by types (folksonomy).

Here are a few new vocabulary words that I learned:
The term "Web 2.0" is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with each other as contributors to the website's content, in contrast to websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.
A social network service is a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the internet,
Wikis are website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages.
A blog is a type of website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
Mashups are digital media files containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video, and animation, which recombines and modifies existing digital works.
A folksonomy is a system of classification and tagging, which is one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 services, allows users to collectively classify and find information.