Final Post

Through taking this class I have learned many valuable ways to use technology in the classroom.  It is important for teachers to stay up to date on the latest technologies because these are what the future generations will be using to work with and learn with.  I loved the web quests and thought that they were a great tool because there are so many out there on every subject.  It is also very easy to create your own for a lesson.  I am also glad that I learned about Google Docs.  They are easy to use and parents, students, and teachers can all access them and have their own personal copy.  The forms were my favorite, but all of the docs made it easy to communicate to parents what the class is doing/working on.  Blogs would also be a great resource for this.  As a teacher i think it would be great to have a blog and let the kids contribute to it at home and the parents and other teachers could look at it to keep track of what lessons we are using and projects we are working on.  I probably would not use Twitter in the classroom just because it is so limited. I would much rather have the kids set up their own personalized blog where they could write as much as they wanted and still subscribe to other people's posts.  I think that I am much more open and comfortable with using technology in the classroom now than I was before taking this class.  I have been given a lot of good ideas on how to use the it with kids.  And because I understand it, it is much easier to teach the kids and come up with ideas on how to use it.

Google Earth

I thought that Google Earth was very user-friendly.  it was so easy to use and there were a lot of helpful links that you were directed to for more information on sites around the world.  This would be a great resource to use for a geography lesson and kids could find different landforms.  Or a geology lesson about different volcanoes, rivers, mountain ranges, etc.  It would also be fun to look at locations that are mentioned in class readings so that the kids could see the region that the characters are describing.

Podcast

I could not get the embedded code to show up, so here is a link to my podcast which is entitled "Potpie Recipe."

http://ia331207.us.archive.org/3/items/PotpieRecipe/PotPie.wav

Using Google Docs in the Classroom

I thought that using Google Docs wa sgreat!  I found the forms especially helpful and very user friendly.  This is definitely something that I would use in the classroom for parent forms and take-home tests for the students rather than loading them up with papers abd hoping they don't get lost.  The spreadsheet would be nice to keep track of grades, but it is still a bit confusing.  I would probably use PowerPoint over the presentation doc just because it has more features.  But, if it was something that I would like parents to see, it may be easier to just make it in Google Docs.  I thought that these were all great resources and they were worthwhile to learn.

Twitter

I do not think that I would use Twitter in the classroom.  I think that there are much better sites out there besides Twitter that could be used for the same purposes and the amount of text that can be written is so limited that it is not worth using.  I am not a fan of this website and I think that it lacks in many areas.

Working with the wikis was a good experience for me, however I would probably use a different site in the classroom. This is definitely something to do in a group and work on one page as a group, rather than working individually.  This site had a lot of problems that I would not want to deal with in the classroom.  This seems like a great resource as it is fast and much easier to read than a word document.

Blogging in the Classroom

So far I think that using blogs in the classroom is a great resource. I remember writing letters to people in the Iditarod, pen pals halfway around the world, and political figures during my primary education. Using blogs seem like they would be a great tool for bouncing ideas off of each other, not only in the classroom, but with other people. I thought that it was so cool that the author of The Secret Life of Bees was able to look at the progress kids were making and hear their ideas of what ideas were represented in her story. It is a great way to get connected with the outside world. It does seem a little intimidating, and I am not sure as to what grade one would be able to introduce this to their students, but blogs seem to be very user friendly. The only drawback I could see was with students that do not have immediate Internet access at home if I were to post homework assignments each day.

My Baby

The Machine is Using Us (Final)

Winter Mornings

This is my kitty, Josey Wales. When it is too cold in the mornings he likes to cuddle right on my face, where it is warmest. Love, love, love him <3

Welcome!

This is the second blog that I have created, and is for C&I 306.