Apple in Education

Photo credit: apple.com/education

We all know that Apple products are everywhere. They are increasingly making it into our schools as well. Along with iPads, other Apple products are easy and fun for students to learn in the classroom. 

As I was researching how Apple plays a part in education, I found a handy resources webpage with basically everything you need to know about how to use Apple products in the classroom. 

Apple's are expensive, but I've always been convinced that they are good-quality products. I have a MacBook Pro, and I honestly never leave home without it. I'm considering getting an iPad some day soon to be able to implement it into my lessons plans, so it will be nice to have an Apple that is a bit easier to cart around all the time. With how many schools are currently getting iPads for their classrooms, knowing how to effectively use them myself will make me more marketable when I'm applying against hundreds of teachers for the same job. A thorough knowledge of all of Apple's products will keep me up to date on the best of technology. 

NET Standards

 Photo Credit: degreedirectory.org

With students spending more time online in the classroom, it is important that they are successfully learning. The NET Standards ensure that students are learning, but they also give teachers a guideline of what they should be teaching when it comes to technology. On the iste.org, there are 5 things for teachers to be aware of:

1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning
2. Design and Develop Digital Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
3. Model Digital Age Work and Learning
4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility*
5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership

(Found on the NETS-T (PDF))

I have a star by number 4, because we took a long time to discuss it in class. Lack of digital citizenship is increasingly becoming an issue. Kids are going online as young as late elementary or early middle school, and the internet seems to facilitate bullying. In general, people are much more comfortable saying things online that they would never say in person. It breaks my heart to think of the children who have taken their own lives to escape the bullying, because, due to the pervasiveness of the internet, they couldn't even escape it in the safety of their own home. Teaching my students how to be good citizens online, as well as offline, will be a huge priority in my classroom.

Finally, there are 6 things students should be learning while using technology:

1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication and Collaboration
3. Research and Information Fluency
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
5. Digital Citizenship
6. Technology Operations and Concepts

(Found on the NETS-S (PDF))

Making My Own Instragram Photostrips!

In class, we had to make our own instagram photo strips. The inspiration came from the website Photoboother, but since my class is called Educational Technology, we had to actually create them ourselves using Photoshop. (As I've said before, I am HORRIBLE at using Photoshop, but I try REALLY hard. I think this project took me well over an hour.)

Anyway, we had to use the photos we had been taking for our weekly Photo Assignment. I made one strip of my pictures of my favorite pair of shoes, my black converse. The other strip was made with random photos of my friends and family. Here's how they turned out:

Favorite Teacher Blogs/Websites

Here are some of my favorite teacher sites! Just so you know, I'm using some awesome things I've pinned to my Pinterest board.

The first is a blog called Classroom Collective. There are a ton of different areas of the classroom that this blog talks about, but I especially appreciate the classroom management tips. For example, this gem was posted and I pinned it to my "For the Classroom" board.

I like the fact that I wouldn't have to disrupt class to discipline someone. I can just set the little stop sign on a students desk and keep on teaching.

The next blog that I really like is called Classroom Freebies, a blog made by Charity Preston, the creator and founder of PEN Group Online. We actually learned a bit about her in my Ed Tech class, because she is a well-known blogger and teacher. (How she has the time for all that she does is beyond me.) Anyway, I pinned this little hot air balloon project, because I thought it was adorable. I love asking kids what they want to be when they grow up, so I plan on doing some kind of career activity with my students. Then, they can go back and see how their answer changed as they got older. When I was an elementary student, I was convinced I was going to be a veterinarian! I realized a few years later that anything medically related was NOT for me, and now here I am on my way to be a teacher. :)

iPads in the Classroom

Schools all over the country are now using iPads in the classroom. At first, I was very skeptical about it. iPads are expensive, and I was unsure of how schools would make the cost worth it. After getting to play on iPads in two of my education classes, I'm convinced that they are definitely a classroom enhancer. There are so many awesome apps that would make students excited to learn. Math games, vocabulary games, you name it! One of my favorite apps was called Piano Man - Piano Lessons. I'm not sure how I would incorporate that particular app into my classroom, but I just thought it was really fun. :) I ended up going home and downloading the app for my iPhone, so I could play it all the time!

Home-made Polaroids

In Ed Tech, we made our own cute little Polaroid photos. I just love these! We were given a template to use, then we just had to go into Photoshop and fit a picture onto each square. All of the pictures I used were Instagram photos, because they were already cropped into squares, and I love the fun filters you can use with Instagram.  It makes the finished product look like actual vintage polaroid photos. 

They turned out pretty cool, huh? I think I'm going to cut them out and use them to make little magnets for my fridge.

Paperless Educator/ iPads vs. Smartboards

"Going green" is a huge movement in the world at the moment. We try to go green at home and in our businesses, but is it possible to go green in the classroom? I think it might be.

I read "5 Web Applications for the Paperless Classroom," on QuickOnlineTips.com, and there were some very interesting ways to incorporate technology into the classroom to save paper (for FREE). The first application the article talks about is Evernote.
Evernote is a way to takes notes, organize web pages and pictures, and a bunch of other functions that could potentially take place of notebooks and binders.


The next application is GoogleDocs. We've been using is a bit in my Educational Technology class, and I'm convinced that this is definitely worth your time. Computers are sometimes unreliable. Several people in my classes had their computers crash, and the stuff saved to their computers was inaccessible for quite some time. With GoogleDocs, you can save all of your work to an online folder, so you can access it from any computer. I like knowing that the documents I have saved on GoogleDocs won't be lost with an unexpected computer crash. Not only can you save documents, but you can also create them online. The software though GoogleDocs is very similar to the Microsoft Office Suite.



The third program is called Zoho Challenge. It is a website that can be used to create quizzes and tests, so summative assessment can be done on the technology as well and no paper is needed. I think students would enjoy being able to take tests on computers or iPads.

Prezi is the fourth online application. I'm in the process of making a Prezi for one of my classes, and I found the process quite enjoyable. It is a nice variation on the basic PowerPoint presentation. A teacher can make a Prezi with information for the lesson, and students would love the way the presentation moves. They would also be able to access the presentation on their own computers or iPads.

Finally, the article talked about Wordle, a website we used in my Ed Tech class. I posted my Wordle creation to my blog way back in August. I like using Wordle, and I think kids would find it really interesting as well. If I used it in my class, I would have them make a Wordle with all of their spelling words for the week. It's a way to make learning vocabulary fun and colorful.

I like the idea of saving on paper in the classroom, but I don't think I'd want my classroom to be COMPLETELY paper free. I think students still need to learn how to write correctly with an actual pencil and paper verses learning completely with a stylus and an iPad. Technology is great, but there are still positives to keeping some of the old ways of teaching.


In Ed Tech, we learned about another way that iPads can be used in the classroom, and it actually SAVES money, believe it or not. I'm sure many of you have heard of the Smart Boards and the corresponding projectors that are being installed in many classrooms. They are really cool, and they have some neat functions, but they are expensive as well. If you have a regular projector and a wireless internet connection, AirDisplay is an awesome way to get your iPad mirrored onto the board. If i had my iPad connected through the projector, I would be able to walk around the classroom and teach with different apps and internet sites. There are whiteboard apps that can be used to write, just like I would with an actual whiteboard. I like the idea of the iPad keeping me free to walk around the classroom as I teach.

Final Craft Project of the Semester

Our final crafty project in Ed Tech was to make a cute little paper box. When you take the lid off, the sides fan out, and you can decorate it in any way you like.

Here's the box with the lid on. It holds all the sides. When you take off the top, it falls down to reveal many different flaps of paper.

If you wanted to give this as a gift, you could put cute pictures onto each flap and write nice memories or things you love about the person you're giving it to. I'm thinking someone in my family may end up getting this for Christmas!

This box was made with 4 sheets of 12x12 scrap booking paper, and we were given the templates in class.

Copyright

Critical Reflection #4

According to the Copyright Frequently Asked Questions page on teachingcopyright.org, "Copyright is a form of legal protection automatically provided to the authors of 'original works of authorship,' including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works." Basically, any idea is automatically protected from misuse. When something is created, copyright laws are immediately in effect, and it lasts, in most cases, until 70 years after the death of the creator. When someone fails to obey the copyright laws, it's called copyright infringement. If someone were to infringe on a creators copyright policy, they may have to pay the owner the amount of money they originally would have made from the creation. It is recommended that creators make their copyright information known to the public, but since 1989, it is no longer required to do so. That's why it is so important for students to thoroughly know the basic laws of copyright when they are creating in the classroom. 

Rules in the classroom are slightly different than the regular copyright laws. If something is being copied or used for educational purposes only, and no money is being made, it can be called Fair Use. To make this easier to understand for myself, I found some examples of Fair Use in the classroom from the Bern Dibner Library of Science and Technology website:

1. A teacher copies one article from a periodical for distribution to the class, but it is recycled after use.
2. A student gives a presentation using pictures he/she did not have direct permission to use. 
3. A teacher shows a copyrighted movie to her class for instructional purposes, but does not charge an admission fee. 
4. A student or teacher used copyrighted music in an instructional presentation. 
5. A teacher copies a Shakespearian play from a copyrighted anthology - the play is in a public domain and not subjected to copyright. 

Thanksgiving

Man, am I thankful for Thanksgiving break! After some very stressful weeks in school and R.A-ing, it came exactly when I needed it. Unfortunately, it went by rather fast. Still, my family and I definitely made the most of the time we had. My mom, step dad, and I went Black Friday shopping on Thursday night, and it was a blast. Laughing as we tried to avoid the crazy shoppers, my mom and I made our way to the back of the store where all of the cheap movies were located. We went to town on those DVDs. Here's a picture of my stash:

I got the entire Harry Potter series for only $18! My family owns it already, but I would like to have a set that I can take with me when I have a place of my own. I don't think I've mentioned it on my blog before, but I am a HUGE HP fan. I was able to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter over spring break last year, and I almost cried from excitement. Now that I'm off on a random tangent, I'll share a picture of me geeking out in Florida. 

Yes, I actually paid $30.00 for a wand. I'm not ashamed! Hedwig was also worth another $30.00. 

Anyway, on Sunday, my mom and I spent a few hours in the kitchen baking and jamming to 80's music together. It was a wonderful way to spend my time at home. We made delicious chocolate chip cookies (I'm willing to wager that ours are the best), and some tasty molasses sugar cookies. The bag of chocolate chips had red and green as well as brown, so they were festive for the Christmas season.

I took a bunch of the cookies back to the hall with me so I could hand them out to my residents. They've been enjoying them, and so have I....I swear, I think I eat about 4 a day. They're just TOO GOOD.

Finally, before I left home, my mom let me put in a request for supper on Sunday night. I decided on a throwback to my childhood:

Kraft macaroni and cheese and pigs in a blanket! Well, technically they were turkeys in a blanket, because turkey-dogs are a bit healthier.  I topped this meal off with a glass of chocolate milk--perfection! With a full stomach and a happy heart, I drove back to Fargo with Christmas break in my sights. I'm now looking forward to three full weeks at home with my family!

QR Codes!

In class, we learned how to create and use QR codes. We were told to create a classroom activity that somehow incorporated the codes, but we could basically do anything that we wanted. I decided to make a vocabulary worksheet.

If students had an iPad or iPhone, they could scan the QR codes I glued to Powerade bottle caps, and it would bring up a definition of one of the words from Dictionary.com. They would find the corresponding word on the worksheet and fill in the definition. For the two bottom questions, they have to find the two bottle caps that contain pictures in the QR codes. I would want them to draw the picture as well as they could. I thought that would add a more fun aspect to the worksheet.

We each brought our activities to class one day last week, and then we went around the room with iPads to try out what everyone had created. People in my class were so imaginative! It was cool to see what the other people in my class came up with.

Crayon Art

Over a year ago, I saw a cool crayon melting project on a blog. I was fascinated! I HAD to try it for myself. Since I work at a craft store when I'm home from school, I had all of the materials at my disposal. I bought a stretched canvas, crayons, a hot glue gun, and some hot glue sticks.



This was the picture that I saw on the blog. Can you understand why I was so obsessed with the idea?? It's beautiful! Anyway, I glued my crayons to the top of my canvas and started heating up the crayons until the wax started to melt.
*I would recommend doing it outside in the garage or somewhere with good ventilation. I once set the smoke detector off in my dorm room...)

I used a hair dryer that was HIGH heat and LOW air pressure. If it blows too much air, the wax splatters a bit. Here's what I ended up with:

I LOVED it!
In fact, I loved it so much, I made several more. I went out and bought an embossing gun, because I knew it would melt the crayons faster. Most crafty stores carry them. If you're considering making a bunch of these projects, I would suggest using an embossing gun over a hair dryer. It will save you a lot of time.

Over the course of the year, I tried to get more creative and think of different ways to display the melted crayons. Here are the rest of my projects:

 

 

I decided to make one of these for my practicum teacher as a thank you. She FREAKED out when she saw it (in a good way), and I swear, I got three hugs from her that day.

 

Many of my pieces will be displayed in my future classroom. They are bright and fun, and the kids absolutely love them. I have also been brainstorming ways to incorporate crayon melting into a lesson, so the kids can see how it's done.

 

 If you've never made crayon art before, give it a try!  :)

 





Wild Yourself

Wild Yourself is an awesome site where kids can make an avatar for themselves and give it "wild' characteristics. Here is the avatar I made for myself:

I decided to go with a peacock tail, because I think peacocks are beautiful! There are several other animal parts that you can use as well. After you choose the parts, the little box on the side educates users on different characteristics of that animal. So this site is educational as well as fun! Our Ed Tech teacher also said that students could make an avatar of themselves, then they could write a creative story about themselves and share it with the class. Their stories would be posted next to a picture of their avatar.

A Bittersweet Afternoon

My practicum hours were finished up on Monday of this week (I even had 44 out of the necessary 40 hours), but I decided to go back today to take a class picture and spend some time with the students one last time. It's nice to have my hours finished up, but I'm sad to no longer be seeing my students every week. For our final day, we had some free time to chat, then we played multiplication bingo. I called out some basic multiplication tables, and they had to find the correct answer on their bingo cards.

Some of the students were wanting to stay in touch after I left, so I wrote my address and email on the white board so they had the choice to write to me. I would be so excited to get mail from one of my students. A few of the girls also took time to write me some nice goodbye messages on the board, and I just had to take a picture to remember them. :)

It was very sweet to hear that the kids were going to miss me. Actually, when I walked in the door this afternoon, the first thing I heard was, "Miss Cote, we've missed you!" I thought that was cute, because I'd just seen them on Monday! Today was definitely filled with some warm fuzzies. I already have plans to go back to visit for Christmas, and I might even make a habit of visiting once a month for the rest of the year. There's no such thing as too much classroom practice, right? 

Posters and forms using PowerPoint --Mind blown!

My Ed Tech teacher taught the class something AWESOME. If you open up a new PowerPoint presentation and turn a blank slide vertical, you can create worksheets and posters. For years, I've struggled to create things in Word. Things move around, margins go crazy...it's frustrating. In PowerPoint, it's simple to create shapes and text boxes or insert pictures. I was so excited to practice with it! First, I made a poster for my future classroom with a quote I found on Pinterest (if you don't have an account, you should seriously look into getting one! Fair warning: it's insanely addicting!)

I loved how quickly I was able to put my poster together. It would have taken me much longer in Word. I also made a form in PowerPoint. I grabbed a form from my practicum school, and I recreated it with some of my own flare. Super easy and fun!

Blurring-out faces!

In Ed Tech, we learned how to use Gimp to blur out faces in our pictures. As a teacher, we might want to post pictures of our classroom online. If parents don't give permission, the child's identity can be kept private by blurring out the face. Here is the example I made:

 I was being goofy when I blurred out my cat's face, obviously. But now his identity is protected. :)


To make a blurred face, you use the Ellipse Select Tool to draw an oval around the face. Then, if you right click the selected area, put your mouse over the "Filters" menu, then straight across to "Blur." You want the "Gaussian Blur,"and by adjusting the numbers at the bottom, the blur changes. The higher the number, the higher the blur. It's super simple!

A little bit about myself

Several years ago, I did a 30-day photo challenge on Facebook, and the first picture had random facts about myself. I decided to share on my blog, so my viewers could get to know the real me! Here it is:

Fifteen Facts

1. I love music, almost any type.
2. I want to be an elementary teacher someday. (I guess I've known this for a really long time!)
3. Traveling the world is my dream!
4. I love my family more than anything.
5. Cookie dough ice cream is my weakness.
6. I'm terrified of ticks and leeches. I get shivers just thinking about them...
7. I was born in Missouri. Random.
8. I'm teaching myself how to play the guitar.
9. I once got a perfect 40 at solo ensemble for flute. Don't ask me how.
10. I have 2 cats: Eddie is 19 pounds (fat), and Lily is a princess. 
11. I may just marry my high school sweetheart. <3
12. My mom and I are pretty much the same person.
13. I trip on flat ground and fall up stairs. Sometimes in front of other people.
14. I get stressed out easily. (I've improved a lot on this one!) 
15. I'm my worst critic. 

These facts still describe me pretty well. I'll tell you a little bit more about my life. I grew up in Fergus Falls, MN, and I lived with my mom, Paula, and step dad, Darin. We've been really close all of my life. My dad lives in Minneapolis with my step mom, half siblings, and step siblings. 

From left to right:

My siblings - Paige, Devyn, Me, Noah, and Blake.

Me, my mom, and my step dad.

I've been dating my boyfriend, Eben, since my sophomore year of high school. We are both attending North Dakota State University in Fargo. I'm majoring in Human Development/Family Science and Elementary Education, and he just started grad school this year for Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Eben has been a HUGE blessing in my life, and I'm lucky he has put up with me for all of these years! ;)

For many years now, I've known that teaching is the right major for me. I love kids, and I'm so excited to be able to spend my days making a difference in my students' lives!

Practicing Google Forms

Today in class, we practiced making our own google forms. I was surprised by how simple this was. (Kudos to Google for making really cool things easy to make). On the Ed Tech website, my teacher used a google form to learn more about the students in our class. For example, she wanted to know what other courses we were taking, if we worked, and if we lived on campus. When we submitted the form, the information was automatically put into a Google Doc.

As a teacher, Google forms have endless possibilities. I could have parents fill out information about their kids, such as birthdays and food allergies. It's also a great way to get to know the parents more. My practice form below has some examples of some information I might ask for. If I wanted the students themselves to be practicing using google forms, I could make up a form with their spelling words for the week (an idea that was mentioned to us in class). I like the idea of having parents help their kids get used to using the computer each week.

My favorite part about this form is the adorable background. Where does Google come up with this stuff? They make me look so tech savvy-- I love it!

Practicum Update

I have been loving my practicum, and I'm very sad that my hours are almost over. I'm going back on Monday morning for my last day, and I plan on taking a class picture to frame for myself. I want to remember my first-ever practicum class! To be able to take pictures in class, I had to send home a permission slip for parents to sign. It was a cool learning experience for me, since I know there will be many permission slips in my teaching future. All but two students returned their forms, so I wrote a little reminder post-it for the remaining two students.

I went for a full day on Wednesday the 31st, and just like some of my college professors had described, the elementary students were crazy on Halloween! They had a party planned for the afternoon, so of course, the students wanted nothing to do with their morning math lesson. They were having a refresher in Partial-Quotient Division. This method of division focuses on taking small, manageable parts of the problem, instead of looking at the whole number you're trying to divide.

Luckily, I JUST learned this for the first time in my Math for Elementary Teachers class, so I was able to walk around and help. My practicum teacher had to leave the room for about 15 minutes, so I was left alone with the entire class. They were struggling with the problems, so I was being pulled in 20 different directions to help and check answers. For some reason, their math journals don't come with an answer book, so I had to stop and work out the problems on my own to see if the kids found the right answers. It was super chaotic, but guess what? I handled it! I even had to get after three students who were extremely off task. I was proud (and relieved) to have kept pretty good control of the class, and on Halloween of all days!

It's very different being in the teacher role verses a student role, but I'm adjusting. I still automatically say, "Alyssa" when people at the school ask for my name, so I think one of my biggest struggles has been learning to call myself "Miss Cote" (or Mrs. Cote, as my practicum students call me. I've stopped trying to explain to them that I'm not married yet). I still really think of myself as a student in my own classes, even though my professors say that we are teachers now. I guess it's just hard to believe that I'm only a year away from teaching! That is both extremely gratifying and terrifying!

Creating Posters

I am obsessed with Poster My Wall! We were given this web link for my Ed Tech class, and I've already made 4 posters that can be used for my classroom someday. Here are some Halloween themed posters, because I love decorating for holidays:

I decided to make one year-round poster as well, and I'm happy with how it turned out:

This site is so easy to use! I browsed through background templates, then I added the quotes. *Special shout out goes to my friend, Alyssa, for supplying me with the "trick or treat" idea!) There were several different font options, so I just played around with them until I found one I liked. I figured out that you need to go one line at a time. For example, when I made my chalk board poster, I started with the words "Actions speak louder," I arranged that where I wanted it, then I entered the next line. If you enter all of the words at one time, you are left with a very small, very LONG line of text. When you click to get the free download of your poster, it downloads in a file type that isn't recognized, so I used Jing to take a screen shot. Easy-peasy!

Tis the season! For Halloween, that is.

Halloween is definitely one of my favorite holidays. I loved trick-or-treating as a kid, and to this day, I still look for reasons to dress up. My freshman year of college, a good friend of mine and I dressed up as characters from one of our favorite tv shows: Sheldon and Leonard from Big Bang Theory. I thought our costumes looked pretty accurate.

You be the judge as you compare us to a picture from the show:

 Not bad, huh? My friend and I found out that Savers is the best place to look for odd-ball costume parts.




Anyway, since Halloween is coming up, we designed our own Halloween decoration in my Ed Tech class. We downloaded a template into Photoshop, then we decorated it the way we wanted. This is what I ended up with:

No one in class really understood what the white boxes were for, so I would probably Photoshop them out if I was planning on using this template for something in my classroom. It was cool to learn how to use technology to help holiday decorating in the classroom. I'm so excited to have a room of my own to decorate somday!

Magazine Cover

To show our proficiency in Photoshop in my Ed Tech class, we had to create our own magazine cover. I thought I was going to struggle with it, since Photoshop has never been a strength for me, but it went surprisingly well! I thought I would share my final product, since it gives me a chance to brag up my awesome cat, Eddie.

He's pretty cute, huh? :)

The "Pet Talk" title was a background template that we were given in class, and we were also given the barcode to make it look more authentic. I made up the rest of the text on my own, and I put each group of words on a new layer in Photoshop. The "Cat of the Year!" box just a shape I inserted, and I messed with the settings to make it look like it was popping out at the reader.

If I wanted to incorporate this into my classroom, it would probably be best with an older group of students. They could have many weeks of learning how to use Photoshop, then this could be a final project. The magazine cover could be about themselves, their family, or a hobby they enjoy doing. I think this would make a pretty awesome project to hang on the fridge at home!

A great day to be an elementary ed. major!

I can't even begin to explain how wonderful today was. Math started my morning off great with learning how to multiply using the lattice method. For those of you who are like me and had no experience with this method in grade school, here's an example:

It's actually pretty fun! I wish we would have had this option around when I was in grade school. Anyway, after math, we watched an amazing movie in Intro to Education. If you've never seen Waiting for "Superman," I would highly recommend going out to rent it.

Finally, I ended my day in Educational Technology. We used the whole class to do some various craft projects that can be implemented in our future classrooms. First, our professor bought everyone in the class a little hand sanitizer spray pen. She wanted us to keep it to use with our future students. If I see them sneeze into their hands, I can whip out my handy-dandy antibacterial spray and have a bit more peace of mind. Everyone in the class had to designed a new cover for our spay bottles, so they look cute for when we use them later. Here's how mine turned out:

After that, we moved on to picture tiles. These are tiny little tiles that come together in a sheet from Home Depot. First, we mod podged a picture of our choosing onto a tile and glued a magnet to the back. I chose my favorite picture of my mom and me.

We were also given pictures that were an example of a classroom management tool. When taking the lunch order in the morning, kids can move the right food item to their name on a magnetic board. You could also put a picture of each child on a tile and have them move their tile to either "Hot Lunch" or "Cold Lunch." It's also a great way to take attendance. I plan on implementing some sort of a system like this in my own classroom someday.

Finally, we used scrap-booking paper, ribbon, glue, and two thin pieces of cardboard to make this adorable little flip book! We made some of our photos into photo-strips last week using photoshop (Oh, how I STRUGGLED), so we put our leftover photos in our books. I love how it turned out, and I'm thinking it will make a nice, cheap gift idea for later. 

Well, that pretty much sums it up! It was definitely a day that affirmed my choice of major! :)