My Blogging Experience Thus Far...

This blogging experience so far has been great! I love having the ability to create such an easy blog! Style and presentation are a must for me so it’s great that this site allows you to have numerous options for changing the layout, font, color, and background images.

I have had some prior experience with creating posts in the past. I tried a website once called Wall Wisher where students could post sticky notes on a page responding to a prompt I would give them. While students liked posting, there was no way for them (or myself) to change the layouts or fonts. When the page would refresh all the sticky notes would overlap and you had to spend several minutes sorting them. There was also no way to control the kinds of posts kids were putting up. I could set it to email me and approve each post, but I didn’t want to have to do that each time. I’m hoping this blog site has more options available.

I love to play around with gadgets and add them to my page. Our gmail account also has a program called ‘sites’ that allows me to have my own webpage. One of the features of the webpage is to be able to add gadgets. I love the countdown feature which shows kids a daily countdown until an event.

Classroom Activities

First stop…Latin America. Each year my students put on our annual Tour of Latin America in March. After our extensive study of the Latin American regions and cultures, students get a chance to play the role of a tour guide for tourists (their parents). The evening presentation starts off with a dramatic welcome video to the tourists of their plane landing in Latin America. Parents then exit the plane to tour all the 26 countries. Each stop provides tourists with the opportunity to learn about the countries location, food, culture, hot spots to visit, and even a stamp in their passport book. Most countries offer food to sample, customs to model, or even a chance to hear the national anthem!

This year Heritage School has had the unique opportunity to be part of the technology integration plan for Saline Schools. Our building was made wireless in the fall of 2009. Each teacher was given a brand new Mac laptop loaded with endless possibilities. We were able to create websites, Moodle Accounts, Twitter pages and blogs to effectively communicate with students and families. We had the ability to use awesome programs like Skype, Comic Life, Wordle, IMovie, Podcast, & Notebook to help students publish and produce amazing projects. I loved the ability to have students be so involved in technology. It keeps me fresh in the technology world as well.

The Annual 5^th/6^th grade Kickball Tournament is something all kids look forward to at Heritage School (and even their teachers)! Kickball is part of the P.E. curriculum at our school and our P.E. teachers put on the best kickball tournament around. Of the past 5 years being a teacher at Heritage School, my classes have won 2 of the tournaments. I currently have one 5^th grade win which my young boys won my first year of teaching. This year I was fortunate enough to bring home the gold yet again as my boys beat out the 2^nd place team in the finals by a score of 8-2! Way to go boys! Now if only the girls could bring home the gold…

Why Blog?

Blogging is the new way to open the doors of communication between students and their classroom. It is a way to bring technology and communication together in a meaningful way. One way I plan to use this blog in my classroom is in the fall as we head back to school. Since I will have a new class of 30 6th graders I think they would enjoy getting to know one another through blogging about their summer. They can include text, pictures, and videos of something cool they did over summer.

A second way to use blogging in the classroom could correlate with our reading curriculum. At the beginning of the year I always have my students take an online survey about their reading history. It would be interesting to have them post blogs onto my website about their favorite book. They could search Borders.com or Barnes&Noble.com for text selections. These links I could include in my website. I would have requirements that need to be posted with each blog. For example each blog needs to have the title of the book, the author, a three sentence summary in their own words, and their favorite line from the book.

A third way to use this blog in the classroom is through social studies. A portion of our curriculum focuses on Latin America. I could post a series of videos from urban and rural towns of Latin America and have students watch a video and respond. Again I would require specific requirements for each post. Students would need to complete the 5 Ws on the video (who, what, when, where, why) and post their feelings about the various lifestyles in Latin America.