About a teacher blog

 I chose Ms. Cassidy's blog to evaluate. Ms. Cassidy is an elementary school teacher in Canada. There are several aspects of this blog that make it so successful. The teacher provides insight into each individual students learning. This can be a great resource for parents to see what their child is doing in class and how they are progressing. I also really like how she describes the lessons and activities done in the class. For example, she doesn't just show a picture of the "whisper phones" she actually describes how they help with blending and fluency.

She also uses media in a lot of different ways. On her page she utilizes pictures, gadgets, videos, and links to other classroom blogs. Her students seem to have a very good understanding of how technology works and can use it exceptionally well for 6 year olds because she implements technology into many different aspects of her classroom. I think this blog really highlights how useful a blog can be for a teacher.

One of my favorite things she does is utilize social media. One the right side you can find a link to her twitter account that she has the students tweet from. I think this teaches them a good lesson not only about using the internet for mass communication but also doing it safely and correctly. Her use of tags also makes it easy to use her site to find specific parts of the blog to utilize. If you want some ideas about colors just hit the tag colors and you have ideas. Her exposing her students to so much common technology really sets them up for success in school and throughout life. I believe that it may even influence how hard they try on their work because they know it will be shared.

About Me and My Class Expectations

This blog is going to be used in my course on Integrating Technology in a classroom at the University of Tennessee. My name is Elizabeth and I am a senior at UT and set on track to graduate in the spring and begin my internship year next fall. I love kids and have enjoyed working with them in several different capacities over the years. I am so excited to get my own classroom one day and start utilizing all I have learned. One struggle of mine is definitely technology so learning how to use it in my classroom will be incredibly helpful.

The main thing I want from this class is to learn practical and beneficial applications of technology in my future elementary classroom. As Technology becomes more and more important in the world I believe it is essential that student start building basic knowledge of it at  a young age. I want to be able to teach my students to use it effectively and responsibly. I have used Microsoft computers most of my life and had previously very limited exposure to Apple technology other than my Iphone. I hope to learn to better work Apple products. I really like the idea of smartboard technology with elementary students so I hope to master that in this course.