534 Week 3 Blog

I first want to comment on how I really enjoyed the video we watched as a group. There were some interesting ideas and concepts discussed in the 30 minutes. One thing that I will take away from the video is that education is going to have to be relevant and meaningful in the 21st century. Most of the men on the panel agreed with this and felt that we are stuck in a late 19th century version of education. In order to compete on a global scale we are going to need to re-think our ideas on education to fit our current time period. This is something I feel real passionate about.
I also want to comment on RSS and bloglines. I really enjoyed exploring the Bloglines and feel there is a real use for it in my classroom. I teach an American Institutions class and I am embarrassed to say that we are still using newspapers for our current events portion of the class. Bloglines offers so many more opportunities for students to get involved and understand current events. As I mentioned bloglines is currently blocked at our school but I am confident that we will move past this decision as a school district. Besides my American Institutions class I also Co-Teach a Biology class. I am very excited to share this with my co teachers as there are some great RSS feeds that we could potentially share with our Bio students too.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

534 Week 2 Blog

This was an interesting week as I learned a great deal more about blogs and how they could really be an effective tool in my classroom. I guess what I found most interesting about blogs is that they give you the ability to help connect students to the world literally on a global scale. As I have mentioned before I am a Special Education Teacher and one of the classes I have taught in the past is Geography. I would love to get a blog started with a school from overseas. Specifically Africa as we spent a great deal of time studying Africa the last time I taught the course. It seems that many of my students fail to realize there is a world outside that of Wisconsin. Another cool resource would be to reconnect with some of the teachers that I taught with in Hawaii. I spent three years teaching there and could get some dialogue going between my class and some of my former colleges classes. Anyway, there are some really cool relevant resources that could come out of using blogs. I will also take away the idea that I should practice more on my own with blogging so I am even more comfortable teaching blogging basics. The only issue I have with getting started is that all social networks sites are blocked in my district. However, as an active member of my schools technology committee I feel like I could present a well thought out argument about the positives of using blogs in my classroom. Also, and probably most important I feel comfortable discussing the safety issues surrounding blogs.

534 Week 1 Blog

So far I have found this class to be very relevant and interesting. I enjoyed our discussion in class on "Shift Happens". For me watching this is a real motivating force as I want to give my students all the skills they will need to be successful in the future. It is strange to me to think that for many of my students we are preparing them for jobs that have yet to be created. This brings me to the focus of the blog and that is what type of technology will I use that I have been introduced to in this class that I was previously unaware of only a week ago. Well, in doing the blog comparison assignment I am very interested in edublogs. The reason is that I teach in a very conservative community and I want to have a blogging host site that will ensure maximum security for my students and their blogs. It is my hope that as one of the first teachers to use blogs in my district I can do so in a a very successful manner and build off the positives of blogging in the classroom. I hope to do this while showing the skeptics in my district that it is safe. The other thing that I like about the edublogs is that there is no advertising on them. It is my opinion that my students are bombarded with enough advertisements and that more advertising could lead to more distractions. Finally, I like the idea that edublog was set up and founded by educators.