College-Week 6

This week went by pretty quick. I spent most of the week studying for the ORELA that I took on Saturday. Now we sit and wait (and hope) for the results. I am really looking forward to having a break.

College What Week is This?

I fell behind a bit, mostly due to the holiday, but now I am almost caught back up. The more work that I do for this class, the more I feel like I am missing something by not meeting in person. I have taken a few online courses before, and they were the read this, write a paper, type class. But with this one, I feel like their would be some benefit to meeting. We are all having discussions away from class, but would be nice to see/learn from each other. Some of us might have some great ideas on how to use these features in our class, or maybe someone is using them right now. Oh, well it is almost over, now to start focusing on the ORELA.

More College

This past week I have become more and more frustrated with this class. It still seems that we need to look in multiple locations to find the material, assignments and due dates. I do see value in many of the assignments, but I wish that we had the opportunity to meet a couple of times, to either share ideas or to be shown how to do some of the work, instead of having to watch/read what has been posted then try to figure it out on our own. Going forward I would suggest that this be a hybrid type class, where the class actually meets a few times during the term.

College Week 3

This week seemed to pass by quickly. There has been much confusion on the due date of assignments, and looking for clarification, only seems to muddle it more. I know the website (which I am still working on) was due yesterday, but everything else seems vague.

I enjoyed the readings about "cyber bullying" and expect that to continue to be a problem in schools for some time to come. Policing it would be very tough, as there are so many sites. Eventually will the schools need to hire someone to constantly monitor these sites? Before, schools used to have truancy officers, will they now need cyber bullying ones?

As technology continues to improve, we as teachers need to try to keep up to date with it. We need to be willing to try new things, as there might be a great lesson plan that could come from it. Finding ways for students to use their phones for learning is one way. Why not have them take pictures and video to show the "Day in the life of..." then upload those pictures/video to the class blog or website and submit their assignments that way. Also, why have students "turn in" their homework, maybe they should just upload to us.

College Week 2

I am so glad that our other class is done, and that we can now focus on this one. The discussions so far, seem to be very interesting and the reading has been far better then that of our previous class. They seem to be up to the minute and meaningful for the class. I am looking forward to more work on my blog and attempting to create my own web site. At first I thought that a blog or a web site might be an unused tool for a class of elementary school students, but then I started to think about how many uses it actually could have. If you posted a class calendar, assignments, notes etc... there would be no excuse for students or maybe more importantly in the younger ages, parents, knowing what was going on in your class. I fully intend to incorporate one, if not both, into my class.

A Little Fun....

Using Blogs in the Classroom

After reading the article "Don't Feed the Trolls" by Karen Work Richardson and viewing the sample classroom blog, it seems pretty obvious that blogs can be an important part of the classroom. The ability to post class notes and sample problems on the blog seem like they would be very helpful in the teaching process.

The article says that we need to teach kids the Civil Discourse, this is very important to make sure that the blog stays positive, open and educational. A place where students can post questions, without the worry of someone making fun of them for the questions that they ask. The blog would have to have the same rules as the class, where everyone is respectful of eachother and there is no sense of bravery to say somehting that you wouldn't say to someone in person.

In the sample blog, I liked how the notes from class were on there, the important dates are on the calendar in the corner and then the teacher placed some various videos and links to items that are educational and still would be interesting to the class.

In the younger grades, a blog would be the ideal place to keep parents updated on how the class was going, any homework assignments or anything else that was going on in the classroom.

It appears that blogs will be a neccessarry part of the classroom for the future. The blog can replace handouts, newsletters and homework assignments handed out on paper. The blog can post the homework and then the students can use this to sublit their homework. This seems to be the wave of the future, and I am interested to see how it will play out when I am in my own classroom.