All good things must come to an end…

Hello, everyone!

I’ve got some sad news… 😦 This week I made the final cake for my learning project. This cake was requested by my sister for her birthday which was on April 7. I’ve got to say, my sister has a fabulous taste in cakes because she picked a delicious cake for us to end with! 

About midway through the semester, I ordered a cake recipe book and that is what I used to learn how to make this cake. Granted a book is not an online source BUT before I bought the book, I found the author, Tessa Huff,  on Instagram and did some research online about her cook book and decided that I NEEDED it! I ordered it on amazon and I was ready to bake! So technically, this book was an online source because of how I found it.. (yeah??)

So my sister chose the black forest cake for her birthday cake…YUM! (As you can see, I have lots of cakes already marked and I’m pumped to try them out! Seriously, if you like cakes, check this book out!!!) 

The author is incredibly thorough when writing directions and ingredients. She spells EVERYTHING out so clearly! She provides a detailed list of every single ingredient you will need to bake AND decorate this cake, as well as quantities in metric and imperial measurements. So good!

I tried a couple new things to make this cake. First of all, I filled the cake with whipped cream and cherries, I made a more complicated icing and I used a texture comb for the icing. So let’s see how it turned out:

All my ingredients ready to go!

Using cherries and whipped cream to fill the cake

All stacked and filled! Ready to chill..

I was very pleased with how the whipped cream performed as a little dam to keep the cherries contained. It also helped keep the cake moist!

Whisking egg whites and sugar

Sooo much butter…

It looked like marshmallow fluff!

Making the swiss meringue buttercream was the part I was most nervous about. I really did not want to mess it up, considering I was making this cake the day of her birthday and I did not have time to re-make anything. I followed the recipe SO carefully during these steps. I used a thermometer to ensure the egg mixture was the right temperature before whipping it up and it went fairly smoothly! Once I had the majority of the butter added, it looked liked the mixture had curdled and this is where the troubleshooting tips came in handy! Each recipe includes some troubleshooting tips to help ensure your cake is a success, how marvellous! I just kept whipping the mixture, as the book said and viola! All better!

Adding melted chocolate

The final product!

I was so pleased with the final result, this icing is so incredibly smooth and light. To quote my sister when she tried it, “On the scale of smoothness, it beats a baby’s bottom!” (Thanks for that Jess…) But she wasn’t wrong, this icing blew my mind. And the hint of chocolate in it was really delicious! Thanks Layered!

I used this video to get an idea of how to use the comb, she explains everything very clearly and the video enhances her explanation a lot.

The next step was to frost the cake. I learned when using a texture comb, you need to pile LOTS of icing on the side of the cake, or else it will not work. I skimped on the frosting the first couple of tries and then I decided to load up the side of the cakes and I discovered that was the key! (sorry I don’t have a picture of the process of “combing,” I was very focused and covered in icing.) Once I was satisfied with how my cake looked, I could breathe again because the hard part was over! I piped some icing dollops along the top, stuck some sour cherries in the top of each and pressed some chopped chocolate into the bottom of the icing to act as a border.

And here is the finished product:

So seeing as this is my final blog post about my learning project, I feel I need to share some of my final thoughts with you!

I really really enjoyed this project and the opportunity that I had to push myself beyond my comfort zone and improve my cake decorating skills. I can tell that I have grown significantly since my first cake back in January. I am very proud of how far I have come and I have learned that I love presenting my hard work to my friends and family. I love being able to see people enjoy my hard work! It makes me feel very proud when they enjoy my cakes.

Throughout this project, I used various mediums to learn how to decorate cakes including Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest and a cookbook. I think my favourite way to learn how to decorate cakes was on Pinterest. It was very easy to sort through different ideas and pick out exactly what I wanted. There is also a ton of variety on Pinterest so I was always able to find exactly what I was looking for.

I am also a visual learner so I found that following a video or at the very least, lots of pictures were super helpful when figuring out how to do something. My first thought when trying a new technique was to look up a tutorial on YouTube. My two favourite channels for finding cake recipes and how-to’s are A Spoonful of Frosting and Rosie’s Dessert Spot. Later in the semester, I discovered a channel called Man About Cake. I really enjoyed watching his tutorials and learning different techniques from him. However, he made really elaborate cakes with multiple tiers and that was something that realistically I just couldn’t do.

Overall, I am very pleased with the resources that are available for someone who is wanting to learn how to decorate cakes. There are so many different options to choose from, and these options all suit different learning styles as well.

Thank you for following along with me as I embarked on the learning journey, it was plenty of fun! I do plan on continuing my learning and perhaps I will blog more about my cake adventures in the future!

Until next time,

Emily Grace.

Starting from Scratch

Ohhhh Scratch. What an interesting website. This week we were learning a little bit about coding in class and the whole concept was totally new to me. I have heard about coding before but I never learned anything beyond it’s a computer thing. I have never had any interest in learning how to code so I just never bothered to involve myself with it. So this week when we were supposed to spend time coding, I was literally starting from scratch on a website called Scratch.

Via https://scratch.mit.edu/

After completing my first Scratch project, I’m not really feeling a sense of pride or accomplishment, to be honest. I was really just playing around with the program, trying to get a feel for what it was all about. You can check out my sad attempt at a code here.

After using Scratch, I’m honestly not entirely sure what I learned. I felt like I did a lot of exploring that led to happy accidents. I learned that coding is hard, especially for someone with absolutely ZERO previous experience. I did not really understand some of the codes or prompts to use them properly in my “scratch”. That is why my sprites are just spinning at various speeds and bouncing along in different directions. I did learn how to draw a background, though, like let’s be real; how fabulous is my ocean scene backdrop. My seaweed along the bottom is rockin, just like my fish! Overall, I learned that I need to learn plenty more about coding if I ever plan to use it in the classroom. My understanding of the concept and the execution needs to drastically increase or we will have a situation where the blind is leading the blind when trying to code. AH!

 

A sneak peak into the world of Scratch! 

I think Scratch is a pretty good website for kids to experience coding. It is a bit frustrating at times, especially when you cannot achieve a certain action in your code. I think that is where knowledge about coding would come in handy. Before allowing kids to go and explore this tool, I think it would be very beneficial to give them a quick run-down about the various tabs and actions to avoid serious frustration. I don’t think Scratch is a starting block for learning to code, I believe it would be a fabulous building block once a basic knowledge about coding is achieved. Maybe trying out Code.org and completing an Hour of Code first would be ideal. When I explored Code.org, I found it way less frustrating and easy to get the hang of. All in all, I do think Scratch is a good place to go for some kid-friendly coding practice. It is colorful, creative and very visual. The combination of these three things allows for students to use their imagination and really engage with what they are creating. It is definitely a fun way to get into coding and to teach students that coding is not just a bunch of boring computer words (like I previously believed up until this week…)

I’m not entirely sure what I think about the importance of coding. Growing up I was never exposed to it and I’m functioning pretty well in this growing digital age (I think…) However, as we increasingly rely on and use technology for more and more things, an expanded understanding of how writing code works would certainly be beneficial. I also think that learning to code will teach children how to think rationally and logically as they work through a certain code. Writing complicated code is not something that I value in elementary education, however getting a brief taste of coding would certainly not be a negative thing. I believe that there more important things that children of younger ages need to be learning before coding but what do I know really??

What do you think? Is coding something that we should be placing a heavier emphasis on in our classrooms?

Until next time,

Emily Grace.

 

MORE CAKE!!!!!!!!

Good evening everyone!

Guess what time it is…if you guessed cake time; you are correct!! This week I returned to my tried and true method of learning how to make cakes, YouTube. More specifically, A Spoonful of Frosting’s channel.

This week I re-created her Rustic Wedding Cake. It is an almond cherry dream and and it is delicious! I’ve made this cake once before and it tasted really good, but did not look very good 😦 So obviously this time I wanted to up my game. I also had the added pressure of selling this cake… one of my friend’s saw the cakes I have been making and asked is she could buy one from me to use at a party she was hosting. NO PRESSURE EM! Here is the video and instructions I followed to create this cake:

I clearly did not decorate mine like that as I only made a single tier cake and my cake was not a rustic themed cake either. I really like how she embeds her recipes right into the video. Some videos I’ve seen just list the ingredients in the description box but I MUCH prefer it when creators include their measurements in the video so I can just listen along as I work instead of having to constantly check for computer for measurements. She is very thorough when describing each of the steps and includes a video clip for each step as well which is extremely advantageous for visual learners like myself.

Working on filling and icing the cake…

Working on filling and icing the cake…

Working on filling and icing the cake…

Once I had the cakes, icing and cherry compote made, I needed to decide how I was going to decorate. I did have a bit of an idea in my head, based on something I saw on Instagram but at the last minute I changed my mind.

Via @bakersbrewstudio https://www.instagram.com/p/BRR9kdmjbsj/?taken-by=bakersbrewstudio&hl=en

I instead opted for a sky blue drip with peanut m&m’s. The chocolate ganache recipe I used is found in this video. I learnt that you don’t actually need a specific recipe to make this yummy yummy stuff! Just ensure your chocolate and cream are in 3:1 ratio and you’re golden! For example: 150g of chocolate and 50g of cream! EASY! I am very pleased with the improvement I’ve seen in my drip cakes. After my first attempt, I was a bit nervous to try another drip but I am SO glad I did. It is super easy and makes a cake look very nice in my opinion. I certainly still have some things to learn like how to avoid little bubbles in the ganache as well as trying different drip techniques.

Here is a video of the drip I made on my cake:

Once the drip had set, I piped a 8 dollops of frosting and topped each one with an m&m. Then I decided it was still needing something so I added a border of m&m’s around the bottom and that tied the whole cake together!

I love the way this border turned out!

My drips are improving!

and TA-DA!! Here it is:

My dollops aren’t exactly perfectly spaced out…

In the end, I’m pretty happy with the final product. I need to be more careful when piping my dollops to ensure they are evenly spaced out though. They ended up being pretty uneven. I plan on making one final cake this semestre but it will certainly NOT be the last cake I make. I have grown to love baking and decorating cakes and hope that it is something I will continue to grow and and challenge myself with. Have you enjoyed your learning projects this semester? Will you continue them after you finish ECMP? Let me know!

Until next time,

Emily Grace

Investigating SEESAW

Hello everyone,

This past week in ECMP355, we were talking about different formative assessment tools. We were playing around with quite a few and frankly, it was very entertaining! Some of the tools we explored were: Socrative, Poll Everywhere, Mentimeter (we looked at this specific tool in a previous week but I figured I would throw it in the list anyways) good ol’ Kahoot, Peardeck, Plickers (this one is especially interesting because the students do not need devices themselves, just papers that will be scanned by one device–super cool!) and Seesaw. Seesaw especially peaked my interest. After briefly playing around with it in class, I wanted to discover more about it. For those of you who may be unaware, Seesaw is essentially a place where students have their own digital portfolios that they can operate. Students post their own work, parents can view that work and teachers can evaluate where their students are at. Positive online interactions between students on these posts fosters strong digital citizenship growth.

It was then that I remembered that a grade one teacher in Regina I follow did a post WAAAAAY back in December about Seesaw. She blogs about more than education, but on Tuesdays she puts up a “Teacher Talk Tuesday” post. Since she is a grade one teacher and grade one is the grade I would love to teach in the future, I find what she has to say very relatable and helpful. Although her Seesaw post was not super in-depth about the tool, she gave a really unique insight to what teachers and students think of the tool. Here is the video that she shared in her post as well:

After going back and re-reading her post, I decided to do a little more digging to discover what others were saying about this tool. This website provides readers with a very clear cut explanation of what Seesaw is and how it is used in the classroom. VERY helpful for teachers who are doing some initial research about this tool. This website provided readers with actual teacher reviews about the tool which are extremely valuable resources to have access to. Hearing from teachers who have had positive or negative experiences with the tool are all important things to consider before using it in your classroom. The reviews appear to be overwhelmingly positive, certainly encouraging news for future teachers or teachers considering implementing this tool in their classroom.

Personally, I think Seesaw is a fabulous resource for students, teachers and parents in the classroom. It is empowering students to take initiative to share their successes in school with parents and teachers. It also gives parents a close-up look at what their children are up to each day. I love that teachers can view the submissions and give feedback as well as completing their own formative assessments of their students. If I have the resources in my future classroom (tablets or some kind of device for the children) I would love to incorporate Seesaw into my teaching practice, especially after hearing how successful the grade one’s in TeachMeStyle’s classroom are at using this tool!

What do you think? Is Seesaw something you can see yourself using in the future? What other kinds of tools would you use to complete formative assessments? Let me know in the comments!

Emily Grace.

Look at how far I’ve come…

Hello everyone!

So as I said last week, I have a REALLY REALLY good carrot cake recipe to make! (off topic but, am I the only one who ALWAYS spells recipe wrong?? recipIe? No? ok.) I have made it a few times and I always receive multiple compliments and I always respond “Man, it’s not me. It’s all in the recipe!!” But nevertheless, it’s a really good one. AND it’s from Pinterest, it’s a win win. Last week, I used Pinterest for my recipe and inspiration and it went sooo well so I figured I’d give it another go!

The first time I made this, I made it into the individual carrot shapes that the recipe suggests:

I thought it was really well explained and although cutting apart the cake was a bit tricky, the pictures were VERY crucial to my success. One of the things that I love about this particular recipe is the detailed pictures that are provided throughout the entire process. As I have shared in the past, I am a visual learner so I depend on pictures to ensure that my process is going well. I like to compare my creation to the creator’s product to make sure that I’m at least on the right track!

The first time I made this cake, it was almost exactly a year ago. I made it for a friend’s birthday. Instead of using the individual cake design as the recipe suggests, I poured the batter into 2 round cake pans and it worked just as well! Here is what my cake looked like:

At the time, I thought this cake was AMAZING! I remember being so proud of it!

For this week’s cake, I drew inspiration from the cake I made a year ago as well as these images I found on Pinterest:

All the directions that I needed to make the cake, were provided on the recipe’s website. Including how to melt the orange and green candy melts.

After my cakes were cooled and cut, I filled and stacked them with cream cheese frosting and crushed pineapple. (pineapple is a MUST for me in carrot cake)

Last time I used cream cheese frosting, it was too runny so the roses that I piped did not hold their shape. This time I added a bit extra icing sugar to make the frosting a bit more stiff. Then I melted my chocolate to create my carrots. I just free-handed a quick little scribble design that slightly resembled a carrot. After I added my final coat of icing, I chopped some walnuts and covered the sides of the cake in the nuts.

Then I used a LVCC 822 tip to create the little dollops of frosting for my carrots to rest on.

And here is my final product:

I’d say that there is a significant improvement in cakes hey? I love seeing my progress in the cakes that I’ve created. It just goes to show how much I have learned during this learning project. And it is all achieved through online sources and some experimenting. How cool is it that we can learn a new skill just by watching videos or reading how-to guides online. Technology provides us with so many cool tools to use in so many ways! I look forward to seeing what other things I can create with the help of online teachers!

I’m curious, how are your learning projects coming along? Can you see improvement in your learning? Are you enjoying using online tools to learn a new skill? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time,

Emily Grace.

What’s Animoto all about?

Welcome back friends!

So this week our task was to investigate a ed tech tool that we were unfamiliar with. With absolutely no background knowledge, I randomly chose Animoto as my tool of choice. all I knew before entering the website and giving it a try, was that it was a website or app to create videos quickly and easily.

I downloaded the app on my phone and I also tried it out on my laptop to see how the tool performed on different devices. I opted for the free account because I was not too keen on paying for anything special at this point. I thought that if I ended up liking it, this app could be something that I can pay for in the future.

I started exploring on my laptop first and I discovered that it is extremely user friendly!  I first went to pick a video style for my video. I noticed that many of the different options
were restricted to premium users, however, there were some very nice free ones as well. There was a specific Classroom category which I thought was pretty cool and allows teachers to create some interesting videos for their students while still ensuring a more professional look.

Once you have selected a style, you are given MANY music options to choose from. There are so many categories of music to choose from. To name a few: Babies, Birthday, Corporate, Fashion, Halloween, Personal and Wedding. Again, a specific Education category was provided. YAY!

After the music was selected, you were taken to what I would call the main video editing tab. This is where the photos and video were added to the template. You can add text to any of the photos or videos. Also, none of your previous selections were set in stone. You always have the option to go back and select a new style, song or text.  They added a logo or you could upload your own logo if you wish to make you videos look more put together. I did not notice this option on the app. 

You were able to move the photos and videos around in any order you wish. I did not notice a place to adjust the duration of the photos, however I could have just missed it. I also did not like that there was a watermark on the video. In order to remove it, you have to upgrade.

Here is the video I created on my laptop, using the website:

https://animoto.com/play/5Ji3WjPTV6DomlDkJUyUhQ

Now it’s APP time! (I wish that said nap time…zzz) I almost preferred creating on my phone rather than my laptop, only because it was so much easier to add photos to the video. The various styles and music were all on one page so it was easy to complete those tow steps fairly quickly. On the app, only the free video styles showed up so it felt like there were more styles available to the user.

 

Captioning the pictures was very easy as well. All your selected photos showed up on a page and when you tapped on one, it got larger and allowed you to type what ever you wanted.

 

Overall, it was very similar to the website, I just was using a different device to create my video. Here is the video I created with the app:

 

https://animoto.com/play/IRo5yPawTPvK0e1UmgYihQ

 

I am a creature of habit and I am very familiar with iMovie so personally I think I would opt for that program over Animoto only because I am more familiar with it. If you are curious about iMovie, one of my classmates wrote a blog post about it and you can read it here.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with this tool. It does what it says, it creates beautiful videos very quickly and easily. However, when creating a quick and easy video; there are some sacrifices to be made. You cannot alter the duration of a picture (as far as I know, please correct me if I’m wrong), the free account is fairly limited and watermarks are placed on your final video. If you are looking for a tool to help you create detailed and specific videos, I would say that this is not the app for you. With that said, I think it would be a very beneficial tool for teachers to make use of. I can imagine teachers using this as a quick into into a new topic or to introduce a new lesson. This could also be used to create an announcement video to send out to parents to keep them in the loop.

What do you think? Do you think Animoto is a tool that you might see yourself using in the future? How would you use it in your future classroom?

Emily Grace.

Thanks Pinterest!

This week’s cake is brought to you by Pinterest! I decided to challenge myself and instead of following multiple videos to make a cake, I followed different recipes I found on Pinterest.  I am a visual learner so watching videos has always been my go-to. Reading recipes is always a bit more challenging for me as I’m always questioning what it is supposed to look like. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy following these recipes was. I am certainly not new to Pinterest, I an avid “pinner.” Although, I am certainly guilty of pinning a ton but never trying those recipes out. Whoops!

So this week I scoured Pinterest to find the perfect lemon cake. Man, there is soooooo many recipes on there!

Here’s just a few: 

But I decided to go with this lovely recipe. I have made it once in the past in cupcake form and the cupcakes were divine! So I figured it would be amazing as a cake! I filled the cake with lemon curd. I made the buttercream that was provided in the lemon cake recipe and it was delicious! I also found my inspiration for the decorating on Pinterest, this is what I found: 

I went for a naked, yellow drip cake. I was planning on garnishing the cake with dollops of icing with lemon curls on top. But man oh man, lemon curls are tough and finicky. I decided to opt out on spending hours on twisting lemon peels and stuck a slice of lemon on each icing dollop.

Overall, I really enjoyed Pinterest as a tool to learn how decorate cake! 10/10, would recommend! So if you’re like me and never try out any of your pins, I challenge you to go on your account and try out something you pinned! You wont regret it!

Well, now it’s my turn! Here’s how I did it!

I noticed that this batter was much thicker than the batters I have made in the past. I had to use a spatula to spread out the batter. I also noticed that it did not rise as much as I was expecting so I had to bake a second batch to ensure the height of the cake.

While the cake was cooling, I made the lemon curd and lemon buttercream. The curd was surprisingly easy! Honestly, I was expecting to mess it up but the directions were very easy to follow. The buttercream was also very easy. I added some white gel food colour to the buttercream, just to ensure that the icing was white and bright!

As you might remember, my last filling cake spilt over and made a huge mess. This time I did not overfill the centre and it was all good! YAY! I’m learning!

I was very pleased with my crumb coat/final coat. I then asked my family members and they all agreed that I should stick with my original plan of making a naked cake. So I made a white chocolate ganache, dyed it yellow and poured it over the top of my cake. Once my drips were how I liked them, I allowed the chocolate to set and piped little icing dollops around the edges of my cake. To finish the cake off, I sliced up some lemon wedges and stuck ’em in each of my icing blobs! And it was done!

My family really enjoyed this cake, to quote my sister “Well I really enjoy it, I’ve eaten 5 pieces already!” Yep, she has probably consumed half this cake herself! Overall, I am very pleased with how this cake turned out. Next time I pipe icing around the edges, I will be sure to mark out each dollop because some of them are pretty close together on this cake.

I think there may be a carrot cake in the near future…I have a fantastic carrot cake recipe that I found on Pinterest. What do you think about that? What is your favorite flavour or style of decorating on a cake? Let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best to give it a try!

Emily Grace.

Using ClassDojo in the Classroom

This week, Kaitlyn Schmidt and I teamed up to create a parent-teacher conversation regarding the use of ClassDojo in the classroom. Read on to see how it all worked out!

Parent Email to Teacher:

Dear Miss Schmidt,

I am the parent of Katy in your grade 2 classroom.

I was reading over the form you sent home regarding ClassDojo and some concerns and questions arose. You say that this program will be a way for you to keep in touch with the parents, as well as sharing some of the student’s work and things going on in the classroom. What are the restrictions and how is privacy set up? I do not want my daughter’s picture posted on the internet for anyone to see. Who will be able to access these photos of my child?

Please contact me as soon as possible.

Thank you,

Emily Giesbrecht

 

Teacher Response to Parent:

Dear Mrs. Giesbrecht,

Thank you for expressing your concerns regarding ClassDojo. I understand your concerns about privacy. For our purposes in the classroom, none of the posts will be available to people outside of our classroom. Only other parents of the students in our classroom will have access to anything that is posted in this site. Any time we post a picture with students in it, only the parents of those students will receive a notification that a picture has been posted. Each parent has their own username and password, there is not one universal access code allowing others access.

If you are not comfortable with me posting pictures of Katy’s face, I will be sure to only take pictures from behind her and post those. That way, no pictures of Katy’s face will be on the site.

In the future, we are planning on adding student profiles, allowing them to update their own work for parents to see. This will allow them the freedom to chose what work they want to share with others. Students will have access to comment on other student’s posts. In class, we will practice leaving positive and encouraging things on peer’s work. Allowing students to have their own profile will contribute to the development of digital citizenship.  If you are not entirely clear on what digital citizenship is; here is a website dedicated to explain the concept: http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/

If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to email me.

Here are some resources for additional information if you would like:

https://www.classdojo.com/privacycenter/

https://blog.classdojo.com

http://blog.classdojo.com/my-journey-with-classdojo/

Thank you,

Miss Schmidt

 

Parent Response to Teacher:

Dear Miss Schmidt,

Thank you for addressing my concerns regarding ClassDojo. I would appreciate it if you only took photos of Katy from behind so her face is not posted. I will take a look at those resources and if another concern arises, I will contact you.

Thank you,

Emily Giesbrecht

 

 

The Internet; friend or foe?

This week, our ECMP355 class had the privilege of listening to Carol Todd as she visited our class. She shared about her journey in regards to her daughter, Amanda Todd, and more recently the trial of Aydin C. in Amsterdam. If you are looking to familiarize yourself with the story, here is Amanda’s video and a documentary that goes in more depth.

Carol Todd is amazing. Straight up. The way she responded to our questions and her outlook on the whole situation is so admirable. She was very open and willing to share with us, which I greatly appreciated. She has taken this tragic situation with her daughter and spun it into an opportunity to speak out for mental health, cyber abuse, sextortion victims and internet safety. She connects with people, listens to their story and has a heart to help these people. I think that is absolutely incredible.

A screen capture from the video of Amanda’s story

Dédé13 Flickr via Compfight cc

After class, my brain was just buzzing with a million thoughts. Initially, I was terrified for my students and future children. After hearing that apps can be inputed with inappropriate content, predators can be lurking anywhere on the internet and that these people can get in contact with any child; I was feeling pretty nervous. I do not want children to have a negative experience on the internet, after all, the digital world is a pretty neat place. I figured if I just wrapped them in bubble wrap and refused internet access, I should be good, right? No, obviously not. Like Carol shared with us, the best thing we can do for students and children is to educate them on how to use their devices safely and how to have safe interactions online. By keeping an line of communication open between students and teachers or parents is something that I believe is necessary especially if you want a child to be comfortable sharing something that is potentially dangerous for them. The internet is an amazing place to connect with people, share resources and learn many things. I don’t believe that young people should be sheltered from that, especially as it is a place for children to grow and explore. However, it can also be a very dangerous place for someone to fall victim to sextortion or cyberbullying if they are unaware. Monitoring student’s and children’s online interaction as well as education children to ensure they are ready to take on the digital world are essential to ensuring the safety of children online.

Sextortion was a new concept for me. I knew that being harassed on the internet was a real thing and that people are blackmailed into doing things they aren’t comfortable with, however sextortion was new. Sextortion is sexual exploitation to gain sexual favours from a victim. In the Fifth Estate documentary,  they outline Amanda’s struggle with this. They explain cappers, the creeps who are exploiting these young girls, and how Amanda was resisting and fighting against what her pursuer wanted. Since Tyler Boo, one of Aydin C. many online identities, already had a picture of Amanda, he was using it against her to gain more pictures and “shows” from the young girl. He was threatening her by saying he would continue to share the picture if she didn’t gibe him more. I think that is absolutely sick, how these cappers corner these poor girls and force the girls to give them what they want. I can’t imagine how trapped and helpless these young people must feel when they are in positions like this.Yet again, another remind of how important it is to be teaching young children what is safe online interactions.

Again, thank you Carol for coming and speaking to us about the trial and the journey that you are on. It was incredible hearing a story like this from a parent’s perspective, and I’m in awe of how you have taken this tragedy and spun it into something to raise awareness for bullying and cyber abuse. Thank you.

In what ways can we already be preparing to face this in our classrooms or at home? How can we take the necessary steps combat cyber abuse? What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments!

Emily Grace.

A Valentine for my Valentine

Welcome back to my baking journey! This week I decided to bake something Valentine’s themed seeing as Tuesday was the special day! However, my valentine and I did not get to celebrate until Thursday; hence the late post.

I attempted to make a cake like this one a few years ago but I did not experience much success so I figured I’d give it another go. A heart-shaped cake covered in roses, sprinkled with pearls is what I was going for. A chocolate cake with mini Reese’s in the middle is the perfect combination for my dear valentine. 🙂

The chocolate cake recipe comes from A Spoonful of Frosting (are you surprised??) Here is is:

I used the recipe for the cake batter as well as the buttercream.  I was planning on making the peanut butter filling but in all honesty, I completely forgot so I put an entire bag of Reese’s in the middle instead. That’s a fair trade-off right?

The middle of my cakes had fallen in slightly.

Sticking with the Valentines theme, I baked my cakes in two heart pans, how cute!! However, the middles fell in a bit but in the end it didn’t really matter. Also, after I let the cakes cool and attempted to remove them from the pans, I kinda broke them. Ooops. But again, it didn’t really matter in the long run. I just wrapped them up tight in some plastic wrap and left them in the freezer overnight.

For my crumb coat, I kinda “cheated.” Instead of mixing up some homemade chocolate buttercream, I noticed that I have 3 cans of pre-made chocolate icing  and I opted to use that for the crumb coat instead. I found that crumb coating a heart-shaped cake was much easier than I was expecting. I might go so far as to say that it was easier than a regular

The completed crumb coat.

circle cake. I placed all my mini Reese’s in a heart shape in the middle of the cake and plopped the second layer of cake on top. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of the middle of the cake. #regrets. While the cake was chilling, I whipped up some vanilla buttercream that I coloured pink with Wilton’s gel food colour in light pink. I have heard that using gel vs. regular food colouring is superior because the gel does not change the consistency of the icing. I didn’t notice a difference with buttercream icing but I made some flooding icing for the sugar cookies I made and I noticed a difference with that icing.

All ready to pipe!

I covered the entire cake in buttercream roses which may sound extremely difficult but in all actuality, it was the easiest cake I have decorated so far. I wanted to jazz up my pink frosting a little so before I filled my piping bag with icing, I used a paintbrush to paint 3 streaks of red gel food colour. I looked up a tutorial to give me an idea of how to do a two-tone icing and found this one. Then I just filled my bag with icing and went to town piping roses. I used a Wilton 1M tip create the roses. I just held my piping bag vertical and applied even pressure and made a swirl and ta-da! Here’s a video of me decorating the cake:

That’s it! Once the roses were piped, I sprinkled some edible pearls all over the cake to add a bit of an elegant touch and I was all finished!

Close up of the roses

How cute!!

I am very pleased how this cake turned out, I love the two-tone icing. I think it really adds to the cake. Plus, it was super-duper easy!! BONUS!! My valentine really enjoyed the cake, his favourite candy is Reese’s so needless to say, the middle was his highlight.

Do you guys have any tips to avoid fallen cakes? I usually rely on my bake even strips but they let me down this time. Let me know your thoughts? Also, would anybody be curious to see a blog post where I give you a run down of my favourite tools and little tips I have learnt that have helped me decorate my cakes? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Emily Grace.