Share and Voice: My Garden!

Hello friends, I just wanted to share one of my projects of the summer with you! My roommates and I created a garden out of the weeds and scrubs in the backyard.

Here is the before picture:

And here is what it looks like now!

From the left there are tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, banana peppers, carrots, spinach, lettuce and cucumbers. We also put flowers along the outside of the vegetables and plan to have a portable bon fire pit next to the bench. So I'll let you guys know when we get the pit and we can have a bon fire! Hope all is well=)

Share and Voice: Green Stuffed Animals

Here's a little secret...Ben from Ben's Virtual Ecosystem is obsessed with those claw machines where you can win stuffed animals from! So the other day he won me another stuffed animal...and let me tell you that it was really cute;) But it turned out that it was "green stuffed!" It was stuffed with eco-friendly stuffing. So I thought I'd share his green efforts!
Very good grab Ben!

Share and Voice: Passing the torch!

I received this award from Dr. V on my reflection because it was so personal and funny! Now I'm passing in onto .......
Erica at E is for Environment! I thought her post about Gardening Advice from Living North was very eco-friendly and has inspired me to want my very own garden! Plus, it gave helpful advice for beginners to start their very own garden! =) And it's about time we get this girl an award! haha kudos to you, Erica!Award Instructions

1. Leave a comment below so that I know you "picked up" the award.
2. Within 1 week, create a Share and Voice post that says you've received the award and indicate who the award is from (be sure to hyperlink).
3. Also indicate to whom you are going to pass on the award and why. Be sure to hyperlink the blogger (use main blog URL) and the blog title (use the specific URL for that blog post).
4. Copy and paste these instructions at the bottom of your post.
5. Publish the post.
6. Visit each blogger you've awarded and leave a comment telling them they've won.
7. Continue the process...

REFLECTION: WEEKS 15 &16

Here it is folks....last reflection of the semester~! Sad but true...

Week 15 & 16:
Last week we had the opportunity to meet Sue Whitney a professional Junker! It was really interesting because she shared her past about how she had been junking all her life and finally ended up doing it as a profession! She seemed really cool and laid back about junking questions and her perspective on creating different things! She also gave us these really cool books, "JUNK Beautiful-The Outdoor Edition" which was very generous of her! Because of finals I haven't had the opportunity to look through it but I plan to before I go out garage hoppin' this summer!

For our last class we presented Dr. V with the picture frame with all our junk on it! Then we went outside where everyone had the opportunity to reflect on the entire semester and say the most interesting thing they learned or what experience was most valuable to them. It was really fun to end our class outside and reflect on blogging and the environment. Just listening to everyone's comments made me realized how much we really learned throughout the semester and how close we've all become through blogging!

Our main online activity was to create an online learning activity to educate our blog groups on our issue we chose for our advocacy project! My activity was about indoor allergens and where they can be found in your house. I thought it was pretty fun because some of the places I never knew of. Then our job was to complete everyone's online learning activity in our Group and do an Eye Opener about our results! I thought this was fun and learned alot (photo created to Dr.V.) about phobias, lead, and health insurance! Great job Group #1=)



Overall, I had a ton of fun in this class and learned a lot about blogging and the environment! Some of my favorite were:

Freaking out about blogging the first two weeks of class!

The Story of Stuff

Photo Essays

Bagley Nature Area -learning how to use a compass

Junking-yay for this summer!

Eat less meat and cheese-it's better for the environment

Group #1 is creative-and awesome!

Eye Opener: Learning Activity Results

----Kathy----

For this activity we did an activity about lead based paint and the harm it can cause. Here are my results for Kathy's crossword puzzle!

DOWN
1) Fetal
3) Older
4) 1978
5) Myth

ACROSS
2) Gasoline
4) 1940
6) Paint
7) Sperm
8) 80%
9) Dust

Our landlords don't think lead poisoning would be an issue in my house. I know most landlords are suppose to forewarn their tenants if that could be an issue. My little sister was living in a house where there was extreme levels of lead and she couldn't have small pets living with her! Thankfully, she recently moved out of that apartment.
Thanks for the activity Kathy, it was fun!

----Heather----

For this activity we had to go to the Health Partners website and check out their Cost of Care. The categories you could look up were Annual Planner, Treatment Costs, and Procedure Costs. I choose to look up what it would cost for an annual eye exam since that was the last thing I went to the doctor for. Here was what I discovered:
Overall, kind of a scary activity, I can't image not having access to Health Insurance!

----Steve----

Steve's goal for his activity was to our group on the different types of phobias documented. Here are my results to his activity:

Section 1:

1. Pteromerhanophobia - The fear of flying
2. Tachophobia - The fear of speed
3. Wiccaphobia - The fear of witches/witchcraft
4. Autophobia - The fear of being alone
5. Bathmophobia - The fear of stairs/steep slopes
6. Glossophobia - The fear of speaking in public
7. Chronomentrophobia - The fear of clocks
8. Cacophobia - The fear of ugliness
9. Leukophobia - The fear of color white
10. Mysophobia - The fear of dirt and germs

Section 2:
1.Fear of Cooking-Mageirocophobia
2 Fear of Birds-Ornithophobia
3 Fear of houses-Domatophobia
4 Fear of needles and points- Aichmophobia
5 Fear of clowns-Coulrophobia
6 Fear of cats-Elurophobia
7 Fear of the sun-Heliophobia
8 Fear of gaining weight-Obesophobia
9 Fear of strangers/ foreigners-Xenophobia 10 Fear of large things-Megalophobia

I have never heard of half of these! Crazy that people are really scared to death of these everyday things! Fun activity Steve, now I will dominate when the Jeopardy category is PHOBIAS!! =)

----Christen----

For Christen's activity we had to watch 'The Health Insurance Game', and discuss whether we felt the video showed bias or whether it was an appropriate demonstration. I feel that Health Insurance is such a huge issue and that as students we may not be too worried about it right now but that will change in the future! But I do think that the video made an interesting point and that everyone deserves affordable health care!

----Kaileigh----

For Kaileigh's activity we had to go to the FCIC's page and learn about Long Term Health Care. Afterwords we had to comment on what we learned. Here's what I got from it:

First of all I really didn't know the difference between health insurance and long term health care. Which is crazy because I work in an assisted living facility where many of the residents probably have this type of coverage. But when you get older you can also use it to live in a nursing home. The coverage is also for people who need constant care or if they are in a serious accident.
The policy cost varies depending upon ones age, benefits, and deductible periods.
I never realized that Medicare did not cover long-term health care, this whole time I thought that was the coverage my residents had. I think that long term coverage and care needs to be a nationwide policy.

That's it, nice work everyone!

Advocacy: The Indoor Air Pollution Chase

Hey Group #1!

I did not create an online learning activity however I found one that fit perfectly with my topic, so here it goes...

Title: Indoor Air Pollution Chase
Purpose: This activity is to educate about the indoor air pollution. This activity should help participants to understand where indoor allergens are occurring in their homes and what they can do about it. Hope to this activity influences the problem that indoor air pollution is causing to help persuade participants to be in favor of the bill I chose.
Background/Reasoning: Check out these three sites to learn more about Indoor Air Pollution and why it is a problem.
http://www.lbl.gov/Education/ELSI/pollution-main.html

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/hpguide.html

http://www.who.int/indoorair/en/

Activity: This is the Indoor Air Pollution Chase. Here's the challenge for you: see if you can find things that can affect indoor air quality at home.

First you go to this website: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/air/in/games-jeux/chasse-air-chase-eng.php

You should see a house! (That is where this activity takes place.) Look around the house, and use your mouse to check out each room. Click on all the objects to find out if they affect indoor air quality.

Side note: Some objects are not necessarily harmful, but you'll still get useful information by clicking on them! Your goal is to find all the harmful things in the house. If you want to know how many are left to find, check your "score", which is shown below the game window.

Make sure 1)to find all allergens for each room. Once you have gone through all the rooms of the house 2) identify which allergen surprised you the most or list the allergen that you are most likely to be affected by. Also, 3) state the solution purposed for the problem your focusing on. Good luck!

Happy hunting! Let me know if you have any questions!

Share and Voice: Grey's Anatomy-Yay!

Ok so, I finally get to do a post about Grey’s Anatomy!!! For those of you who don’t know, it is my favorite show and after watching last week’s episode, all I could think was SHARE AND VOICE!

Anyway, on last Thursday’s show there was a patient named Karen (but she called herself Willow.) Willow had fallen out of a tree and broke all her limbs! What was she doing in a tree you might ask? She was living in it of course. She had been living in a beautiful 200-year-old tree, named Kylee for the past 6 weeks. Willow was bulldozed out of the tree “Kylee” so a company could clear cut acres to build another ski condo complex. She kept blaming her pain on “those corporate bastards” and had planned to be up in a tree in Utah, in a few weeks. However, this was not possible due to her severe injuries.

After Willow’s sister talked with those “corporate bastards” they agreed to pay the medical bills and not sue her for trespassing, only if she wouldn’t sue them and never trespass on any of their properties ever again. Willow denied the agreement because she wanted to stand up and fight for the acres of forest they have single handedly destroyed. She was so concerned about the environment; issues like “the bees dying and the temperatures rising” were part of her explanation. Before she could explain further, she was rushed into emergency surgery.

Although, Willow’s efforts were a little extreme it was interesting to see how strong her character felt about the environment, more specifically the forests that continue to be cut down. Now, I’m not going to tell you how it all rolls out, I’m not even going to tell you if she survives. But I encourage you to watch last week’s episode to find out! For more information about the show, check out abc.com!

Thanks for reading=)