This is My Child Life

Do you know I actually remember meeting you in Kindergarten? We were reading together in the hall when I volunteered one day. I thought to myself, "this little girl is so cute....and so quiet, what a sweet thing." I also remember in 2nd grade when Steph said to me, "Mommy, I've been playing with Bella a little bit, she's really fun. Can we have a playdate sometime?" I loved your friendship with Steph. You had your circle of friends and she had her circle of friends. It just seemed that once in a blue moon whenever she needed a break from the circle you found each other. With that, a very sweet and special friendship took shape. Steph was never scared when she found out you had Leukemia. Honestly I wasn't either. I thought, It's ALL, totally curable.  It'll be a long road, but there is a finish line. Because of my experience as a Child Life Specialist, I jumped in there. Spoke with your teacher to the class with confidence that there was a PLAN,...

Last week was almost a balance fail. Kids were out of school for ski week, although we didn't ski. We slept in and hung out and I did 2 projects for school and worked my job. Finding time to work on school was no small feat, but I did it.  For Digital Media this week we were working on Digital Audio. This was so hard for me. I have an appreciation for music, but have never worked on anything with sound before. We had to use a sound mixing program called Audacity and after watching approximately 1000 tutorials I made a promo for world thinking day for the Girl Scouts. My daughter was my narrator (spending time with kid during break-check). I think it turned out OK.  check check, 1, 2...... http://bengal.missouri.edu/~kmbk3f/ISLT7361/Unit3/beckler_digitalaudio.mp3 Then the biggie project was the pilot for my website. I must say I think it's coming along. It's still under construction, but I'm really proud that I have hand coded this all by myself and it...

When my children were learning to ride bikes my husband used to say to them, “you have to fall down at least 100 times before you really learn to ride.” I am learning quickly the same goes for Photoshop. I fell down many times with the Photoshop program.  So much that getting up and shaking it off almost became me throwing my computer out the window! My biggest issue was text/type, which from what I understand is an art of it’s own. I accidentally rasterized my text (made it into a picture) so had to start over which was challenging as I didn’t realize the mistake for some time. It took me texting a graphic artist friend for an hour then just taking my laptop to school drop off so she could actually show me what to do to fix the issue.  Although frustrating at times, once I got going I started to enjoy putting the puzzle together. I also enjoyed creating my own image with the tools I had learned about in the lesson as well as a few I figured out by watching tutorials...

BOOM! I just coded what I learned this week....(drop mic).

http://bengal.missouri.edu/~kmbk3f/ISLT7360/lesson1/ Read it and weep.....2 loooooong days..... what is it you ask? I know, I know there is nothing there. Well that's step 2. I'll deal with that on Friday. I found myself in a state of panic when the instructions weren't clear. To me it read: downloadthehttpfilewhichisabengalpagebutnotbengelwithanebutwithanaandthentheurlfileandthenmakeafolderbutwewonttellyouhowtomakethefolderortheurlyouwillneedtojustfigurethatoutonyourownandwellgoodluck. On day 2 at 11:30 PM when I was at the end of my rope and planning a conference call with the graduate assistant for the next day. I decided to go through the modules again and low and behold there was a video with detailed instructions (I swear it wasn't there before) to: Create a space in the Bengal server to store all of your work. Apparently my work will be for all to see on the web. It's not searchable, can't find it on google, but with the URL you can see it all. Th...

I was reading about Hugh Hefner the other day (I know not so "child lifey" of me) and at one point in his career he decided remake himself as a " bon viveur " and "man about town" that he would live the life he promoted in his magazines.  Outside of the wild parties and extra boyfriend or 3, I feel like I am following in his footsteps....sorta....in a sense.  I am adding something new to my life. Technology. So now I'll be like Hef and promote my lifestyle. I'll blog, tweet and learn what I can in graduate school in order to step up the game at my children's hospital. My first classes are Intro to Web Development and Digital Media. I have started the Web class and I had to call IT immediately and ask for help. Good start! Per the professor by the end of class I will be able to code my own website. (stop laughing). I'll blog along the way as a way to help myself journal what I learn throughout school. Feel free to follow along and ...