by Cristell Ramirez

For this blog post, I decided to watch a show from a different country. I love watching different shows and movies from different cultures because I always find them so much more interesting. I watched a show on Netflix called Million Yen Women. It is a Japanese show about this group of girls working together.

I love watching shows in Japanese so I loved watching this one. In the show, you can see how different the culture in Japan is from here in the United States. This show is about a struggling journalist who is struggling to write his book and he is living with five mysterious women. Each one of the girls has a different personality and each one has their own quirk.

The landscape there is completely different. I think this is because they live in the city and here in New Jersey, you are used to seeing more of a rural atmosphere. And the way it looks so different in Japan. Over there, yes you see cars but most often you see people walking from place to place since everything over there is closer.

It was an interesting show to watch. I like watching shows with subtitles no matter what show I am watching. There are options to watch the show in English being the voiceover and have the english subtitles. But I dont like listening to the show in English because I feel like the translation is not exact. Even though I do not know or even understand Japanese, I would much rather watch it with the english subtitles.

You can also see how the inside of homes are very different from the inside of homes here. They are more modern and they have more gadgets inside. Usually the weather was cloudy and sunny, but mostly from what I saw was cloudy most of the time unless it was night time. And they would again, walk or use a car to get places. They live in a complete different culture but I love learning more about it. They live a life which is different compared to how we live here.

by Cristell Ramirez

For this virtual field trip, I went to Tokyo, Japan. As long as I can remember, the idea of going to Tokyo to discover and explore has been in my mind. And ever since I watched Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift, watching the Shibuya crossing, I fell in love with it. So I took this little virtual field trip to Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, Japan.

Shibuya Crossing is probably one of the busiest intersection in the world. It is always moving and there are always thousands of people moving on it. I would love to one day cross it because of how amazing it is to me. From using the tool where I can see a full 360 view of it. And you can see how there are people constantly walking back and forth on all of the walks. It is also called the Shibuya Scramble Crosswalk for how many people walk by and most likely, a lot of people get confused on where they are going.

Check it out here!: https://www.360cities.net/video/shibuyacrossing-8k360vr-mp4

by Cristell Ramirez

Virtual reality is slowly taking over the world. Virtual reality is a simulated experience that is similar to or can even be completely different from the real world. This can be used for education, entertainment even for business. There are many different devices you can use for virtual reality. There is the Oculus. The Oculus is one of the most expensive VR sets available. It is priced at $300 and it can be a big spend for a lot of people. Especially if they are using this for education. On the lower price side there is the Google Cardboard. The Google Cardboard is priced at $8.95 cheapest and the most expensive is $40.

Google Cardboard is a virtual reality device that can be used with your phone. You play a video or a simulation on your phone and put it on for you to see it with your VR device. Since VR devices can be expensive, this is a great and inexpensive alternative. It can be used with your phone depending on the size and you can put basically anything on it so you can see it.

This can be used in the classroom. If there is a budget of 100 dollars, you can buy 10 Google Cardboards and use them in your classroom. Even if you can buy one which is $8.95, you can allow students to try it. It can be used for teaching different things and using different immersive videos. On YouTube you can find 1,000’s of educational videos on VR.

There even is an option to get the kit in order for you to build it yourself. It can be used for you to make your own and find the supplies. This is great even if you cant order it online, you can find the supplies and then make it yourself. You just follow the steps after downloading the kit.

I think every kid should be able to try this tool out. This is an educational and immersive experience for not just students but it can be used for adults. Using a virtual reality experience and even owning one, can be expensive. But this is an affordable way for classrooms to experience this.

I found this downloadable PDF from the New York Times which includes different tools you can use in order to make VR a part of your classroom and curriculum. VR is used as an immersive experience and it helps students understand more in depth what they are learning. It comes with tools in order to build your lesson plans and how to plan your curriculum around it. It comes with 8 different lesson plans to use with the virtual reality.

(article:https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/learning/lesson-plans/virtual-reality-curriculum-guide-experience-immersion-and-excursion-in-the-classroom.html)

You can find the full PDF here: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/virtual-reality-teaching-resource-guide/2f53bf8c259b3b2d/full.pdf

Buy the Google Cardboard here: https://arvr.google.com/cardboard/get-cardboard/

Check out my twitter: @CRamirez2001 !!

by Cristell Ramirez

For this blog post I dove into the website of the Out of Eden Walk. What is the Out of Eden walk? It is a journey completed by Paul Salopek. It was 24,000 miles and it took a decade long to complete. Salopek decided to walk the path of the first humans who went from Africa during the Stone Age. He covers different stories of our time which can be either climate change or tech innovation or mass migration and much more. He writes, takes videos, takes pictures and audio, whatever he can do in order to create the record of human life and he gathers all this information as told from villagers, traders, farmers, and more. He went out to rediscover our world and shared it with everyone.

Chapter Six: Middle Kingdom

I started off by researching more into chapter six which is In Progress: Middle Kingdom. I saw an interesting post called “Crossroad of Memory.” This is a post about the time he spent in China during the COVID-19 epidemic. This was October 13th 2021 in Yusan, Yunnan China. Salopek calls China a crossroad of memory. He was used to traveling by foot and on ground and suddenly he gets on a plane to reach China.He hadn’t walked for 20 months and COVID-19 had put everything on a pause. Everything is down because of the pandemic and business is bad.

He begins his journey in Yunnan province which he calls “a crossroad within a crossroad.” Indian and Asian plates were collided in Yunnan. There are glaciated peaks and sweltering valleys with brown rivers that cut into the jungles of Asia. Yunnan contains over 19,000 higher plants and there are 2,000 vertebrate animals. And that represents the higher part of China. He follows the paths of unknown people, the hunters and gatherers who mapped the paths over 60,000 years ago. He landed in Shanghai and he was carrying no money. He couldnt buy a cup of tea, so his friend 500 miles away must use their online shopping app in order to even buy the cup of tea in the quarantine hotel. Since the pandemic is still going on, they need to quarantine for a while.

This is a video Salopek put in this article. This is the “yellow ochers of drying corn and the lipstick reds of drying chillies.” The families of the frontier town of Tengchong thresh rice. My favorite quote from this article is “All the world is a crossroad. But so is the heart.” He talks about the whole planet and how it is walking backwards into the uncertain future with new economic competition, mass migrations, and more. And he continues his journey.

Chapter 2: Holy Lands

From this chapter I read about Sami’s World. Sami Nawar is Salopek’s host. He is the director of Al Balad which is the famous historic district of Jeddah. He has over 1,000 plans for projects and he even says “Jeddah can be pronounced “jaddah”. In Arabic this means grandmother. This is the city of humanity’s grandmother.”

Salopek came here looking for Eve’s grave. The Koran says, Eve alighted on a mountaintop near Jeddah after Allah exiled her from Paradise for eating the forbidden fruit. There is a modern Tomb of Eve Cemetery in Old Jeddah but Salopek did not find a mausoleum or a shrine only a sterile burial ground. Other than this we learn more about Sami and his stories and how he did being a guide for Salopek.

Chapter 4: Silk Road

This chapter is about the Silk Road, on May 16th 2016 in Olanak, Kazakhstan. Salopek talks about an ancient form of mystic healing. “Amir Khan is a certified sage.” He has an office in a compound outside of Aktau. Inside the compound, Khan has his mansion, dust yard and a detachable complex with many different room. There is a tent that is like a waiting room with 200 sick unhappy people and these are Khan’s patients. They have already given up on modern medicine so they are hoping for the old practices of folk healing.

A quote from Khan, ““We pray to the ancestors. We read the Koran to them,” Khan says. “This makes them happy with us, because we remember them. They protect us.”

The mass ceremony goes like this: they gather around an ancient burial ground. They feast at a guest house while the sunsets and then they line up in the night before bonfires. They ceremonially “wash” themselves with the smoke of the sheep fat being burned. Then Khan blesses them beside the grave and then blows in their ears, eyes and heads. He then is driven back home by a driver in a SUV. He has finished his work.

Summary

I have truly enjoyed reading about the Out of Eden Walk. I was able to see different kinds of culture and the different walk that Salopek had taken. Even though I read a little out of order, I did enjoy learning so much. I will definitely be going back to learn more about the other chapters and more in depth with the chapters I already read.

Check out my twitter! @CRamirez2001

by Cristell Ramirez

When reading chapter 2 of Sail the & C’s, I learned about a lot of different tools and the importance of communication. Communication is key to everything in my opinion. Especially as educators, being able to communicate is one of the most important aspects of teaching. Being able to communicate with your students is important along with them being able to communicate with us. There sometimes can be language barriers and we need to learn/teach our students to communicate us. Personally I feel like every student should have the access to this tool and or any translator tool. I understand what it feels like to have a language barrier and not understand what is going on because of it so having this is essential to me.

Microsoft translator is a tool in which you can have live captioning and translation in the classroom. Schools are becoming more and more diverse. There can be students who don’t speak English and their families can’t speak it either. Being able to communicate with the family of your students is also essential since you want the family of the student to be in the known of what they are learning in school. Not just there being a language barrier that this tool can be used for, it can also be used with students who are hard of hearing. Since it has a live captioning option, it can be used for the student to read the lesson and still get all the information.

Microsoft translator can be used for many different situations. As you can see you can use the live translator. If you are having a conversation with someone who speaks another language you can translate in the moment and it even speaks for you. In an education setting, you can use this with students or with the family of them to translate in real time or even give you captions. It can be used for presentations/lectures and it can be used during work groups. Here’s a little video on how to use translator in school.

Information from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/education/

Check out my twitter! @ CristellR2001

by Cristell Ramirez

In today’s education system, collaboration is an important part of it. Teachers and professors collaborate all throughout the day and there are changes being made constantly. Back in the day, teachers would be making their lesson plans by hand and then it went to making their lesson plans on the computer and printing them out. Worksheets for students were being printed out daily and now worksheets are being added into Google Classroom for kids to do right from the computer/tablet. Every single day teachers do work together to figure out this time we live in and they collaborate in order to keep up with this technology and make sure everything is up to date.

Teachers can always share what they are using or doing in their classrooms, whether it be at their work place or even online. Since there are new tools or new worksheets being found out every single day teachers need to communicate with one another. When a teacher is involved with the student’s academic life, the student can achieve more things academically. When a student is engaged in the lesson being taught they learn more because they feel like they are understanding more and they are having fun with what they are attempting to learn. So when a teacher finds a good method of teaching its great that they spread it and let other teachers know so they can use it also. The education system works wonderful when there is collaboration between everyone.

by Cristell Ramirez

Technology has become such a big part of education. In the time we live in today, it has become the biggest part of our world of education. In school, we use it every single day, whether it is to watch videos or write our papers virtually it has become one of the biggest tools we use.

Online learning has become the most important parts of our world since 2020. For months students all around the world were practically forced to work from home online. All our work was being done from home and behind a screen. Technology basically surrounded our entire world and it currently is. It is not going anywhere.

Educational technology is a tool where you use any type of technology to help with the process of learning. In this time, there are thousands of tools that can be used to help students with their learning and make it easier for them to understand the subject easily. There are different methods of teaching and each week, teachers share their tools that have made their students more comfortable in their learning environment.

by Cristell Ramirez

For this blog post, I went on the website, www.we.org to learn about some practices I am able to adapt into my future classroom. WE charity is an internationally known charity/educational partner in which it allows students to have the tools in order to create transformative social changes. This organization works with communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to implement WE villages where the 5 pillar international development model in order to achieve sustainable change. If we are going by numbers, one million people have been empowered to lift themselves out of poverty, two hundred thousand children have access to education, over forty million hours of volunteer has been logged in WE schools and so much more. A little more about the WE movement from the creators themselves.

Information from www.we.org

I decided to look at the WE teachers diversity and inclusion module to use in the future for my classroom. I learned different ways of making kids feel included in my classroom. Making sure I follow the different practices for the kids to feel safe and in a place where they can express themselves whether it be gender, race, ethnicity, or sexuality. School should be a safe place for kids to express themselves freely without judgement.

Being able to include every single one of students no matter what they identify as is a big deal to me. I am excited to be a teacher where I can talk about different cultures and their practices. Growing up, I never really had these things and I would feel left out and I don’t want one of my students to feel like that.

I want to know and be in the know of everything going on in my classroom. I want to make the kids feel like they can trust me enough to have conversations about these different topics. And with this I have to understand my own background to understand theirs.

There are so many more modules to look at but this is the one I found the most interesting. There is so much more to learn in this specific module and it even comes with different resources and activities to be incorporated into lesson plans. I will be trying my best to follow through with what I have learned in these modules.

by Cristell Ramirez

Hyperdocs are used my teachers/professors all around. They can be used for just about anything having to do with teaching. A hyperdoc is either a google slides presentation or a google doc. The teacher uses this in order for their student to learn more at their own hands.

Teachers use this in order to have more kids be able to learn at their own pace and be able to interact more. There can be worksheets added to their lessons with each hyperdoc. Hyperdocs can have all different types of resources in it. It can have videos, such as EdPuzzle where the teacher can see the progress of the video and how long it was watched. There can be links attached where you can be asked to read. There can also be interactive slides where it can be a padlet, or a google doc or there are many different tools that can be used. Here is an example of a hyperdoc for kindergarten. Kindergarten Hyperdoc

These are two examples of what hyperdocs can contain. Since I choose to show a kindergarten one, it might be more simple than others but most do the same things.

This is just a chart where hyperdocs are helpful. The way they help kids with learning and each has a different experience and they learn differently. Hyperdocs help with students reflecting upon the assignment they are learning and teachers can see where the student needs more help with it.

I think when I become a teacher this will certainly become a major tool I use. I want all my students to be interacting with what I am teaching them and I want them to really learn. Sitting in a desk and doing worksheets all day long was the worst part of going to school when I was younger. Now that we have all these amazing tools at our reach, we should take advantage of it as much as we can. This is a great tool for teachers to use and help kids with learning.

A big goal for every country should be to end poverty. By the year 2030, the global poverty rate should be 7% (United Nations). Especially with the beginning of COVID-19 in 2020, the level of poverty increased rapidly. It became the first time where there were levels of extreme poverty rising. There were 119-124 million people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020 (United Nations). There are a total of 17 goals written by the United Nations that can transform the world we live in. The number one goal in this list is to end poverty.

There are top priorities in eliminating poverty from the world. Directly from the source of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

• Improving access to sustainable livelihoods, entrepreneurial opportunities and productive resources
• providing universal access to basic social services
• progressively developing social protection systems to support those who cannot support themselves
• empowering people living in poverty and their organizations
• addressing the disproportionate impact of poverty on women
• working with interested donors recipients to allocate increased shares of ODA to poverty eradication
• intensifying international cooperation for poverty eradication

From: https://sdgs.un.org/topics/poverty-eradication

The goal is, by the year of 2030, poverty is eradicated in all its forms. This might be considered one of the greatest challenge of all. The definition of poverty is that you don’t have enough material possessions or income in order to complete the basic needs of a person. Poverty can cause many different issues socially, economically, and politically.