Overall Experience With The Class

In this course I learned a lot about the practical utilization of technology in the classroom. In the modern era technology is an important part of life and students are both familiar with and accustomed to it. I enjoyed learning how to use different programs to create lessons and other resources for classroom use. It really caused me to think outside the box about how I could use various technologies in my elementary classroom one day. One of the things I am most passionate about as a future educator is making learning fun for my students. Technology,when utilized correctly, can create a classroom environment that is,informative, exciting, and interactive.

My biggest concern from this class is that I will not have the time or freedom to reproduce some of these activities. Several of the projects took me upwards of six hours including class time. I hope that now that I am more familiar with the programs this won't be an issue but it still worries me. Technology is constantly changing and developing so I am concerned that I won’t be able to keep up.

My favorite activity was probably the digital story. I feel like these are more attention grabbing than power points and can be used before or after teaching a lesson. Mine was on volcanoes for a science lesson for 5^th graders but I think that digital stories could be used for virtually every subject and grade. I’m really interested to try and make a book walk for emergent readers in the earlier grades or ELL students I may have. Overall I am really glad I learned this technology and I am excited to use it in my work with students.
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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.