27 January - Google Part 2

This week I learned how to create a classroom website. It is a great place to tell my students and their parents about me, post announcements, keep a classroom calendar, provide resources for my students and many other things. It is awesome and something that I intend to keep up throughout my teaching career.

I'm not exactly sure how this will impact my life currently, but I know that when I become a teacher and have my own classroom, this type of website could be a great asset for me to use to communicate with my students and their parents. I do not see how I will currently use this site as a student, but the potential for my future is great.

I am so excited to learn about google sites. I am excited about how I am going to use this in my future classroom. I intend to keep this website current and use it to communicate with my students and their parents. I love the idea of being able to post announcements, quick surveys, homework and the calendar on this site. How awesome is that to be able to refer them to the website for alot of their questions? I know that as a parent I would love to have something like this so that I do not have to bug the teacher for my little questions. I think the parents will really appreciate the simplicity of it and being able to look and see what is going on in the child's classroom whenever they can.

20 January - Google Part 1

This week I learned about googledocs which includes documents, spreadsheets, forms and presentations. It is really cool how you can collaborate with someone else on the same document. I was amazed at how it all works and how helpful it will be for me.

I think that I will be using this resource alot in the next 2 years as I complete this program. It seems that we are required to work alot on group projects and presentations and this will be such a time-saving resource for us. We will not have to meet in person and can work on the same documents at the same time. I am excited to get better at these tools so that they will be even more effective in my schooling. I can also see how convenient it is that you can access these documents from any computer. I have a laptop, but am reluctant to drag it around to each class and now I know that if I save something in googledocs I will have access to it from any computer. I also think that I will save my key assignments on google, as well as on a flash drive and my hard drive. It just gives me another place to keep my portfolio so that if I have problems with my computer or flash drive, the documents will be safe.

I think google will be a great tool for me as a teacher. I would like to use it as a way to have my students collaborate on documents, but also as I work with other teachers on different things. We can work on them from home and not have to carry a flash drive back and forth. We can work on things simultaneously, saving a great deal of time. I also intend to use google forms as a way of surveying my students, giving them a quick test to see if they understand something and possibly getting feedback from parents. I think it is an awesome way to have them respond quickly and easily to a question without having to have them sign and return another sheet of paper. It is also very environmentally friendly to do things electronically and without wasting paper.

13 January - Introduction...Special topics blog

I have two educational heroes that have meant alot to me and who I respect very much . The first is Mrs. Warenski, a 2nd grade teacher who has taught 2 of my children. I have been extremely impressed with her and her ways of teaching. She genuinely cares about each student in her class and it is obvious to the students and the parents. At a parent teacher conference for my son, she actually got teary-eyed and emotional as we discussed my son. I honestly do not think she only did that for my son. She sincerely loves each of her students and wants them to succeed. She is an example of an amazing teacher and the kind of teacher that I want to be.

My other educational hero is my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Hansen. She was so important to me and I admired her so much. She made me feel important and like I really had the potential to be anything that I wanted to be. She was the sweetest and most beautiful lady, inside and out. She made me want to learn new things and had a great way of teaching. When I have seen her around, through the years, she always remembers me and even knows my name. That has had a definite impact on my life and I hope to be the kind of teacher that she was to me to my future students.