Reflection

Well I have to say I was so excited to complete the course last week that I never scrolled all the way down to see part 3 of the lesson.

My favorite lesson was the one on blogs. At least it is now. I started a blog with my students and a classroom at Riley. I love it! I wish I had more time to spend with it on the kids but at least for now we are doing what we can. They loved spending time "blogging" like the big kids and the big kids like interacting with their friends.

I hope there is a part 2 to this course for next year. Although, I could see the upside to retaking this class again next year. I may only be speaking about myself but it is hard for me to take on more than 1 -2 new things at a time. If I repeated the course (next year) I could focus on some of the other lessons that were too far above my head this year.

Either way.. thanks and it was a pleasure!

Resources for STUDENT USE

I have to say my students and their families do not visit my website! That has been an issue in regards to me really wanting to develop it. I am not really sure why or what I can do to change that. However, earlier this year, I decided to develop my site for my peers use. Of course it doesn't hurt to have a nice one when I know my supervisor may pull it up too. I would love any suggestions on how to encourage family use. Some ideas I have are for my students to read a story and record it. Then upload it on the web page. I would have a featured student each week. In the past I have uploaded pictures of my students to the site. I would like to continue with that however, currently I keep getting an error message (see my blog on digital photos).

So to answer the question about how I plan to give the students the knowledge that the resources are there.... we will do it together in the computer lab.

Resources to Support YOUR Content Area

This was not that hard because I "cheated". Really I used a short cut, I went to a peer's teacher webpage and looked up their resources. Using Delicious gave me the idea. I looked at a peer's webpage whom I respect and know to have resources. I would not want to do a blind search for a website, not because I think it would be hard. Rather because it would be time consuming. I am not willing to give up my time and put effort into looking for information blindly when I know I can use the blood, sweat, and tears of others:-)

Social Bookmarking

I set up a Delicious account over the summer for another online class. I have to say I really like the idea of what it is but I have not used it at all since August. I will say it is very helpful in sorting website data. I just don't see myself putting things there when I could place them on my LPS teacher website. This way my peers and parents can access the web sites I mark.

Personal Learning Newtork

I have always felt very strongly about teachers continuing with their professional development. However, it is not always easy to find something that your want and need to learn about locally. I really like the idea of developing your own personal learning network -- a group of people who can guide your learning, point you to learning opportunities, answer your questions, and give you the benefit of their own knowledge and experience.

The best example I can give for my PLN is my Skype and Twitter accounts. These accounts allows me to interact with teachers I know and work within my district as well as accessing other professional farther away. I am still developing my twitter account to be more that just a data collection system. I need to find ways of sorting through all of the data and finding the part of data that is relevant to my classroom.

YouTube in the Classroom

I love You Tube! I started using this at home with my boys. We would listen to music videos or watch Shaun White snowboard. It wasn't until this school year that I brought You Tube to life in my classroom. At first, it was a reward for students at the end of the week. If they earned enough points by Thursday they could tell me what video they wanted to watch on Friday. I would later search it out and if it was "ok" I would save it to my Favorites. Then the next day I simple would click on their choice.

It was in January when I first used it related to a lesson. My students watched Martin Luther King give his famous I Have a Dream speech. It really made the lesson become real to them.

I think this Zamar is easy to use. I am wondering why we would need that... is that to send the video to a friend? Can't we on most sites enter the link to post it for public viewing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxlQn7KaCNU

Using Online Tools to Communicate

I am proud to say that I now have a BLOG for my K-4th grade special needs students! It has been up about 1 week and everyone loves it. After attending the MACAUL conference and hearing how K students were successfully blogging, I thought it was time to at least try this with my students. It has been a learning experience but a wonderful one.

I agree with the article on the "black hole experience". So for right now I am commenting on every post. Even with my low number of students this takes at least 20 minutes every day or two. I can not image what someone would do that had a large class or classess. But I feel that every post is like a message on my answering machine and it would be rude not to respond. Hopefully, it time my students will be more inteactive and looking less for a reply from me.

Now that this BIG project is under way I am more excited to try and follow a blog. It is funny since 4 - 5 weeks ago I thought those were too much to ven think about. I think it helps to not feel so overwhlemed!

I am going to start following a blog hopefully on blogging with young children.