Blog Post #15 - Final Reflection

Blog Post #14

As assigned, I explored Jose Picardo's blog entitled Box of Tricks. Mr. Picardo is a foreign language teacher at a high school in England where he teaches Spanish and German. He is passionate about teaching and he incorporates technology whenever he can into his language lessons. Reading over his blog was very interesting. He gave some great sites that are valuable resources for teachers. I was particularly interested in the information he gives on making the use of interactive whiteboards more effective. I currently have one in my class, and I am always looking for new and inventive ways to use it. I especially enjoyed reading over his blog resource page entitled A-Z Resources for Education. It had some many great sites and ideas that I decided to add it to my PLN.
I also watched Mr. Picardo's video entitled Top Ten Tips for Using Technology in the Classroom. In this video he gives tips to teachers on ways to get started and be more successful with using technology in the classroom. Mr. Picardo says to use streaming video and music to enhance your lessons. There are plenty of good videos out there readily available from YouTube and Teacher Tube, and he thinks each teacher should have an I tunes account. He also suggests using teleconferencing such as Skype to bring the outside world into your classroom. You could Skype with a classroom from another country or skype with a professional in the field your students are currently studying. Picardo also thinks teachers should create interactive exercises with sites such as Hot Potatoes, learn ways to use the interactive whiteboard more effectively by using sites such as Triptico, and create their own podcasts by using sites such as Garage Band. More of Picardo's suggestions include starting a classroom blog or wiki, making use of social networking sites, and using the numerous amount of free tools the internet has to offer. His last tip is to make the most of your students' gadgets, such as ipods and cell phones.
I think these tips are all great, and as a teacher I would love to start using them all. However, I think it can sometimes be overwhelming, so teachers just starting out with technology should start with one thing at a time. I think starting with "baby steps" will make things easier and teachers will not get overwhelmed. When teachers get overwhelmed, they sometimes go back to more comfortable way of doing things. I am glad I was introduced to Mr. Picardo's site. It gave me lots of new information and lots of new things to try in my own classroom.

Final Report on PLN

I have added some great new sites to my PLN. I have found several teachers's blogs that I have added to my site including Mrs. Yollis's site. I also went to a professional development workshop at my school and it happened to be about PLN's. The instructor shared numerous informative sites that are a must have for teachers. I also started another PLN for my for classroom website. I labeled it Student Resources, and found several sites that are safe for the students to use to create projects and do research. I know I am just getting started with technology, so I will always be finding and adding new sites to my PLN. However, I do feel that I have gotten off to a great start so far.

C4K Summary Post (covering November comments)

During the month of November, I had the pleasure of commenting on three different classroom blogs. They were all very interesting and I enjoyed reading and responding to them. The first blog was Mr. McClung's World which is a blog by a teacher named Mr. McClung who blogs about his teaching experiences in the classroom. The post I read from Mr. McClung was Lessons Learned. In this blog, Mr. McClung discussed three lessons he had learned from his recent teaching experiences and he shared those lessons. Lesson One was about a fundraiser that his school incorporated for the United Way. The school has different teacher competitions to raise money for this organization. This year students could use their donations to vote on a teacher to grow a beard and Mr. McClung had decided if he won, he would allow the students to choose his beard style. Lesson Two was about a normal day in class when a male student came in wearing a blue tutu and changed the whole demeanor of the classroom. Lastly, Lesson Three was about about the track team that Mr. McClung coaches. I told Mr. McClung that he seems to be a teacher that really enjoys his students and has a great relationship with them. I bet his students really enjoy going to his class, and he is certainly going to be one of those teachers that will make a difference in his students' lives.
The next blog I read and responded to was Mrs. Yollis's Classroom Blog. Mrs. Yollis is a third grade teacher with a great learning style. The post I read form her blog was Hip Hip Array and it was all about examples that she and her students came up with to explain multiplication. I told her class that their post was very informative, and I let my own third grade daughter watch the video that Mrs. Yollis's class had created about arrays. It was fun and my daughter enjoyed it. Mrs. Yollis is such an impressive teacher with a wonderful blog.
The last blog site I visited was Logan @ Pt. England School. This is a school in New Zealand and I read a blog by a student from Room 14 named Logan. His post which was Untitled was written about a school assembly with a space theme that he went to and the funny things that happened there. I told Logan that I liked to learn about space as well and that Star Wars was one of my favorite all time movies. Logan actually was the only student to ever comment back to me. He really appreciated my response to his blog.

Summary Post #4 for C4T

For my last two C4T assignments, I was assigned a blog called Art Viewer. This is the blog of a high school art teacher named John Burrow. Mr. Burrow uses his blog to showcase the art work of his students and the work is very impressive. The first blog post I read from Mr. Burrows was Still Life. This post was about an assignment that Mr. Burrows had given his Drawing II class. They had to use objects from the classroom to create and draw their own still-life. They were told to draw it like they saw it. He had thirty different student examples to view, and you could click on each one to view it larger and separately. They drawings were quite impressive, and I told him that his students had some real artistic talent. I also told him that I really enjoyed the sketches that had included a skateboard. Those were my favorites. I also told him that using a classroom blog to showcase his students' work was a great idea, and I told the students to keep up the great work.
The next blog post I read was The Finished Coke Bottle. Mr. Burrows displayed on his blog a beautifully realistic painting of of a Coke bottle with a lemon and a lime sitting next to it. The colors he used were so perfect and they were splashed in different spots on the painting. I told him that it was an interesting contrast of cool and warm colors and I really liked the texture of the Coke bottle and the lemon and lime. I also told Mr. Burrows that even though I was no artist, I could still appreciate good artwork and I really enjoyed this piece. What a fantastic use of a classroom blog!