I don’t mind leaving comments, but I always read them before I publish them to make sure I am coming across the way I want. I know a few people in this class so I commented on the theirs. I also took the risk of commenting on someone’s that I don’t know. I hope they are OK with that.  That is when I felt a little funny…commenting on someone’s blog that I didn’t know who they were.  I enjoyed reading other peoples aspects on things and could see their side of the story too if it was different with mine.

I think this would be a great tool for students that are aprehensive about receiving oral comments about their writing and it was a good way to get feedback – negative or positive – to improve themselves.

I am a member of Facebook. I do reread my comments before I post them to make sure they come across the way I intended. I can see how some people add information that is way to personal too. I also see how some parents are allowing their young children have a Facebook page. I don’t agree with this.  I have two in my distant family…ages 11, and 12.

In my personal life, Google Docs will be a great way for my siblings and I to communicate on certain things. For instance, there are five of us and to come up with ideas or share information it is like sending a billion emails.  I like that we can all share this one page.  Currently we are all discussing Christmas ideas for our dad and planning our Christmas gathering. I created a page that we can all go to and list our ideas and plans for our gathering.  I am excited for my siblings to check it out and see how much easier it will be than sending and replying to many emails.

Google maps is amazing. I have looked at these before. I noticed that when I looked at the satellite view that it is still out of date.  We built a new house 4 years ago and it still does not show up on the satellite image.  It is impressing to look at, but a bummer that it is so out of date.  I liked the other ways to view maps too. I checked out Muskegon and also the town I grew up in, Lowell.  I think that the traffic view will be great for traveling somewhere to see if there are roads closed.  I currently had a friend traveling to GR from by Mackinac and said 131 was closed. I didn’t hear of that so I checked it out on the traffic map and sure enough it shows that it is closed and due to open sometime in May. This is good to know because I usually travel that way a couple times a year.

I think students would love to see this especially when different places are being discussed and they are not familiar with them. I think that the terrain views will be great to use in social studies classes when discussing land forms, etc…

I thought that was very interesting and looking forward to sharing this information.

 The top picture is of a collage I made of some pictures from a literacy night I helped put on at school. The second picture is of my sons helping my dad get hay for the calves. I grew up on a dairy farm in Lowell and we love to spend our summers out there.

This went alright until it was time to add some pictures. I was getting really frustrated because I spent about an hour on trying to get that part figured out.  Adding the links wasn’t too bad. I just went to tools and printed out the forms on how to do some of the things and put them in my folder for future reference.  I didn’t see one in there on how to attach pictures.  Can you attach videos that are not part of YouTube?  I have videos on mycamera that I tried to attach, but was unsuccessful.  I did like looking at other blogs though to see their pictures and their “themes” that they chose. I wish their was more of a choice in themes.

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/kplus_writing.htm

I love this website because there are many kindergarten writing resources on this page. I use this a lot for alphabet tracing pages. You can customize the page by putting in your own words. I will make pages with my student’s names so they can practice them.  There are many resources that are beneficial on this website.

I chose two blogs to check out. The first one was “The KinderKids Blog”. I thought was a great blog. I liked all the pictures and videos. This would be great as a parent looking into their child’s classroom. They can keep current what is going on and some of the things they are doing. I liked how the teacher put the student’s names down the side of the blog so you could click on them and see who else is in the class. I think this would be beneficial for parents to when their child is talking about their friends and the parents don’t know who they are.  I LOVED the Father’s Day project as well!  There were also some nice links on there for parents to see and check out.

The second one I looked at was “Welcome to Room 8″.  This blog was fun and informative.  I thought the other one was better with the pictures and videos though.

Blogs isn’t something new to me, but knowing some of the ideas behind it really gave me an eye opener.  For instance, my principal has a blog and will post a question and ask teachers to respond to it.  Before reading this article, I thought that it was a good idea if I had time, but that was about it.  After reading this article I really thought more about educational blogging and can see that it automatically generates growth and teamwork among my collegues.  We are contributing to this blog collaboratively and finding our “personal voice”.  We ask our students to be good writers for life long learning and blogging is a way for us as adults to keep that life long learning alive using the writing process.  We are writing from our head and heart!

While reading the article and watching the video it made me more motivated to bring more technology into my teaching.  I am diverse in other ways when I teach, but know that in the technology area there could be more improvement.  I want to “engage” them more into what I am teaching and want them to feel it, learn it, get emersed in it.  I liked the saying, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” I can see how the younger generation is no into their technology and if we can bring that into their every day learning how effective it would be.  I want to create that richness in my teaching.

I have heard MANY good things about this class and am very excited to be in it! I am looking forward to learning new things and brushin up on some skills!