Thursday, January 29, 2009

Reflections: Week 1 and 2!

^^How cool is this image? It is the twilight sky over Georgia's 
Cumberland Island National Seashore from the National Geographic Environmental Site.

Hi Everyone! 
How is everyone doing? I am sure we are all a little lost/frustrated with this whole blogging thing, but I think we will all get the hang of things once our blogs are all set-up and ready to go! I cannot believe we are already done with our 2nd week of our Environmental Health class...

Looking back, the 1st week was a pretty laid-back introductory week, going over course information, syllabus, and Dr. V trying to teach us what Environmental Health really means. We also did a very interesting/fun activity in the beginning of class where Dr. V put circles of ropes with different sizes all over the classroom and we had to fit our feet within the circles. Eventually, we were all down to one circle and we had to fit about 25 students within this 3 foot circle. I was impressed to see that eventually after some trial and error, our whole entire class fit into this one circle. Dr. V wanted us to reflect what that activity meant to us and it really was an analogy for our environment, our Earth, our society, and a way to communicate to one another. We also had to create a gmail account.
In our 2nd week of class, there were quite a few things we had to learn. We started doing blogs. We are using blogs as a way to communicate with each other, post assignments, learn from each other, comment, and do all of this without using paper! Dr. V was very patient with us and slowly taught us how to create a blog and add gadgets and advanced features. It is really cool to see everyones' different blog sites and the avatars are great too! haha. We also learned how to create and add things to our blogs by watching YouTube instructional videos. I am interested in seeing how this semester turns out with the blogs!
In the past 2 weeks, I have learned that I do not know a lot about environmental health and I am really interested in seeing what kinds of things we go over and learn about in class. I also learned the meaning of environmental health which is defined in my post below. These past 2 weeks have showed me that technology really is a big part of our lives and we need to adapt with the technology in order to communicate and try new things. Blogging will be an eye-opening way to communicate and hopefully we can all learn from each other! I had briefly went over blogs in my Computers in Educations class with Dr. McCarthy but not to the extent of what we are doing in this class with gadgets, advanced features, commenting, and following. Blogging and our Environmental class will a fun/new/challenging experience this semester and I am excited to see how it goes! Well, it's getting late and it's time to go. Thank you for reading and leave a comment if you'd like!!
Have a good one and MAKE A DIFFERENCE! :)


"Be the change you wish to see in the world." ~Mahatma Gandhi

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Welcome to Choh's Changing Environment!!

Hi and welcome to Choh's Changing Environment! My name is Kathy and I am a Community Health Education major at UMD. This blog is going to be a space where students from our Environment Health class can communicate with each other and learn about environmental health without using paper assignments! :)

Remember guys, according to W.H.O, environmental health can be defined as: "all the physical, chemical, and biological factors external to a person, and all the related factors impacting behaviours. It encompasses the assessment and control of those environmental factors that can potentially affect health. It is targeted towards preventing disease and creating health-supportive environments. This definition excludes behaviour not related to environment, as well as behaviour related to the social and cultural environment, and genetics." (just in case Dr. V asks us again!) 

There are 5 possible types of posts on my blog. They include:

  1. Advocacy Project
  2. Eye Openers
  3. Reflections
  4. Reviews
  5. Share and Voice

If you notice at the bottom of this post, the categories will be listed as labels. This post has been labeled with all five kinds of posts. You will also see the number of each kind of post in my Labels Gadget at the top of the page. All post titles from now on will begin with one of the categories above.

The members of my web group are

  1. Steve @ Steve Goes Green
  2. Heather @ Heather's Healthy Environment
  3. Christen@ Christen's Environmental Health
  4. Kaileigh @ Kaileigh's Nature Log
  5. Shar @ Shar's Virtual Environment

You can subscribe to my blog by clicking the subscribe gadget in the gadget column. You can also follow my blog by clicking "Follow this Blog" in the gadget column. I am subscribed to all the blogs in my blog list gadget. You can see my complete profile and all the blogs I am following by clicking on "See Complete Profile." 

Thank you for stopping by, I hope we can all learn something new together this semester! 

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." ~Mahatma Gandhi