THING FIVE

I found a blog site that I am very excited to use and I want to share it with the other elementary teachers in this group:  http://blogs.scholastic.com/top_teaching/2011/04/my-april-top-ten-list-going-green-at-school.html
The blog is written by Beth Newingham, a teacher from Michigan.  She teaches third grade and blogs and writes articles for Scholastic. She has a lot of wonderful ideas for her classroom.

Since I have completed Thing five I think I can answer my question from Thing four:  I just have to manage time wisely and just read the good stuff and stay away from the junk that is posted.

I am having a lot of fun.  I just need more hours in a day. :)

Thing Four

Time Management, Time Management....when will I find the time to read the blogs I just subscribed to?  I see the value in following blogs and seeing what other teachers are utilizing but there are not enough hours in a day. Does anyone have some good time management techniques for me?

I found the RSS button the easiest way to subscribe to blogs and I will utilize that one. Now I am off to complete Thing Five and hopefully be able to organize all of this.

Thing # 3

I enjoyed the blog by Bud the Teacher as the pictures and writing prompts were very insightful.  I can see myself doing a similar type things with my third grade class.  Our school website allows teachers to have password protected web pages which include blogs.  If I post the picture and writing prompt to the secure website then the privacy issue is a moot point. I also visited the First grade blog site and enjoyed their videos.  She is  an amazing teacher to put that together and share it.  My end of the year project involves oral biographies. This assignment has me considering filming and posting  the individual reports to my school blog.  Something to consider.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

The first thing that comes to mind as I type in the title of this post is the classic Dr. Suess book The Cat in the Hat and all the trouble Thing 1 and Thing 2 got into.  While I don't anticipate getting into trouble I do feel that I am entering an unfamiliar world.  I use technology in my classroom but it is more like a one way street...computer games, Brain Pop, United Streaming.  The articles and video from Thing 1 show me that I need to make technology  more interactive. I am willing to try new things to improve my teaching-thus the reason for taking this course. As an educator for 30 years I want to keep up with the newest information and technology available.My personal goal for the next few months is to implement more Web 2.0 tools into my third grade classroom.  That is also my challenge, how do I make sure the work posted and completed is my students' work and not the work of their parents.