I love you Tori Poo! I think you are an incredibly corageous, strong, and lovely young lady. Stay true to God and don't ever hesitate to be you in any situation. All the pieces that make up you, are what creates such an intriguing, beautiful person from the inside out. Be confident, be strong, be kind, be faithful, and be committed to the things that really matter in life. God has an incredible future in store for you and we are going to take a missions trip together, even if it is not this year to the Philippines. Maybe next year, momma will let you go cause you'll be 17. :) I love you more than words can say and am so proud of the awesome, beautiful, young christian lady that you become more each day.
Tori is my oldest niece and is 16 today. She is beautiful, fun, bold and loves God. She's been with me for a week and we have had some excellent fun, good talks, and eaten way too much spanish food. (4 days in a row) I've loved every minute of it and will miss her when she is gone. We are celebrating her special day tonight at PF Changs with family, so the fun is not over yet. These photos are a few that I took Friday night. We visited a dirt road out by my house for a photo shoot. I love her......:)
Tori is 16 Today...
Tree.....
I've been dying to shoot this tree in silhouette, since winter. Tonight the sky was pretty cool for getting silhouette shots, although, I got out there later than I wanted. Some of the shots still turned out kinda neat looking. I'm going to try to get some shots just a bit earlier next week, before it gets quite so dusky.
Social Media and Higher Education
Social Media is becoming an extremely vital component of communication and contact with students in higher education. Many different statistics now show that 75% to 98% of incoming freshmen communicate and respond more through text message than almost any other media. The significance of this to me? Where I work we have been researching different means of communicating with our students by using forms of social media. We have to track every contact we make with a student for report purposes and sometimes it is impossible to get students to contact us back when we email or call them. As a result of this, we have delved into utilizing other forms of contact such as Facebook or text messaging.The other reason this is significant to me is because I have made research regarding the effectiveness of social media in higher education my topic for my Community Relations course. The course I am in is built basically for secondary educators rather than post secondary educators. Therefore, it has been a challenge to tweak the course for my level of educational administration and to keep it relevant. I chose this subject because we are in a real quandary in higher education regarding effective ways of encouraging traditional students to stay in contact and return communications. The other piece of this is that many programs have to track students throughout their educational journey to analyze retention and success rates of students.
My research has been quite interesting as I have studied the pros and cons of social media in higher education, although, definite information is still somewhat murky at this point. One thing that has been identified, is that many schools are now utilizing text messaging for emergency notification of crisis situations on campuses. Other educators feel that utilizing text message and Facebook cheapens the quality of education students receive. On the other hand, the creators of Blackboard feel that Facebook is so vital to students that they have created a program to interface with Facebook. Blackboard Sync will integrate Facebook right into their course management program and will offer students information on, and the ability to interact with, their specific courses.
Many reports say that students are not too hip on the idea of receiving text messages from their school and spam is a very real problem. However, many advisors share, through personal conversations, that about 50%-70% of their most effective communication, with their specific advisees, is done through text messaging. Our athletic advisor spends the better portion of their day text messaging their advisees and the coaches.
So the latest information I have ran across is a radio show on CBC that asks the question:
"Are teachers who use Facebook, text messaging, instant messaging, etc more effective teachers?"
Information about the show can be found here. Its too bad that CBC does not offer the complete script of the information, as it would make an interesting article critique/analysis.
So what is your take on this question? Do you think that instructors and educators who use social media are more effective? All comments are welcome, but be warned they may be integrated into my research. :)
Missing You....
God dropped someone in my mind and heart again this weekend......the 1st time in a long time. I missed them so bad and a burden struck me so strongly that it drove me to pray. We've taken different paths the last little bit, but I wonder if God is not quite through yet. I will just keep praying and see what happens......
~ A little extra prayer never hurts....
The Preservation of a Life's History...
Monday my Grandmother called and asked me to come over. She had been asked to speak at our youth service on Tuesday night and wanted to speak about her missionary journeys. She was requesting that I take pictures of her pictures to put on a power point so the youth could share in her adventures. It was a neat opportunity as I have been planning to go and sit with her to record her stories. I feel that it is vital for my family to preserve her history, as she has influenced and mentored many men of God.
I went over around 6:30 pm. carrying my camera and my digital recorder. I wanted to make the visit as comfortable as possible, but also wanted to record, take notes and use the occasion as a bit of research. We started and she began to tell me the stories of her missions adventures. She went to Pakistan first in December of 1979, and then went to Bomi Hills, Liberia in, I believe, the spring of 1986. She could not remember the exact date so we are going to check her passport. Grandmother is 88 years old and she gets confused now and then, this is why I feel that it is so vital we get this information preserved while we are able. What rich, rich information she had to share. I will attempt to tell a story on her maybe once or twice a month as I begin to transcribe my notes and decipher the recordings. We began to go through her pictures and she described events as we sorted through the photos. Two, very quick, hours later.....I began to take pictures of selected photos for the power point.
The shared time and information was amazing. I don't ever want to take my loved ones for granted. We ended the evening by going out to eat at LoneStar and had a nice time of simply being together. There is much more information to glean from this amazing woman of God. Next week, I want to record her talking about her evangelistical journeys here in the states. She held tent revivals in the sixties in the Texas Pan Handle and New Mexico and has some amazing stories to share about those days. My hope is to compile all of the information into book form, so her history will be preserved for all of the Elder generations to come.
Here are a few of the pictures I took, although, I am not extremely impressed with the way they turned out. I am looking for a way to preserve the pictures to a digital format to file them, but do not have her negatives, so have to find an effective way to do so.
At a dinner for the Bible School in Pakistan.
Grandmother is in the top left corner.
Another picture in Pakistan at the same dinner.
Teaching in a Church in Liberia
Being groomed by Duchess, a Chimpanzee found and
kept by the Hall family at the Bomi Hills Compound
Part of the facilities in Bomi Hills
Apostolic Landmarks...YC 2008
Teacher, Dorm Parent, Auntie, Camp Store Clerk and Helper, Choir Director and Praise Singer..... Wow! What an insane, busy, awesome, anointed, power-packed, fun week we had! I never want to get too old for youth camp!
