Wiki

Wiki's are cool I can tell that this is a great tool for my 5th grade team. We are departmentalized but we work as a team and do many things jointly and this is a great way to collaborate with each other.

RSS Feeds

I really enjoy the Google reader. I have created a account and it automatically had the blogs that I follow added to it. I can see that this will be a useful tool for managing multiple education websites.

Google Docs

The next assignment for ECAP was to create a Google Doc. I can see the potential for this in the future, but as for my students right now I don't see us using this. We do not have enough computers in our school for this, and the many of the kids don't have computers at home. I would use it personally to work on documents on my home computer as well as my work computer. That is why I saved my TEKS to Google Doc, so I can post notes in them from both work and home.

Delicious

Today I created a delicious account for ECAP. I think this is one of the best things I have learned about recently. It is like pinterest but instead of pinning pictures it pins useful websites. I see cool websites and lessons all the time that I would like to use for my class in the future, but when it comes time for me to teach that TEK I often forgot where that thing was. Of course I could bookmark it but I don't like the clutter on my browser. Anyways here is my account: http://delicious.com/browna18

Glogster

Creating a glog seems really neat. I can see many possibilities for this technology in the classroom. It would be a great way to teach kids about technology while at the same time having them incorporate knowledge. It is today's equivalent of creating a poster presentation, but know the whole world can see your creation and not just your school. Unfortunately, to utilize all of the great things on the site you need to pay a membership but there is plenty that can be done with the free version. Here is a link to the glog I created: http://browna24.edu.glogster.com/blog-safety/

An ideal for blog use in the classroom.

I think it would be a great ideal to use blogs in my history classroom. My school has a webpage for every teacher and this semester I think I will use it to summarize material. This will help the kids stay on task and allow their parents to get a view into what it is that we are learning about.

It would be neat if I could also have guest bloggers (students) for extra credit. I could allow the students to do a little research or expand on something we are discussing for extra classroom credit. For example, when we talk about westward expansion I could give a student the option of writing a paragraph about a family moving west and post it on the blog. Then the blog could be displayed during class to encourage participation from others and elaborate on information we are already covering.

My First Year of Teaching

My first year of teaching has been fabulous! All the time someone asks me how school is going I have to reply with "well it's going," because I know that if they really get me started on the subject I will talk them to death! This must be the most rewarding and frustrating job ever! I love seeing how excited a kid is when they realize that they just got a 100 on their test. At the same time it is hard to deal with the emotions that accompany dealing with these youngsters, especially when you see situations where these kids have been dealt a bad hand in life. One of my fellow teachers said something that struck me. This teacher had been a former youth minister but he said he liked teaching because this is where he felt he could really make a difference in the lives of young people. He felt that children who were in the church already had a support system that could help them, but some of the kids in schools did not have anything. Even though he was not able to give religious education he felt he was able to set an example and teach kids the way a man should act. I totally agreed with this, teaching is a profession where you can make a difference in someones life. Wether it is just teaching them to multiply or teaching them to have pride in themselves.