Thing #3 - Classroom Blogging ideas

I have used my blog in several of my graduate classes to demonstrate what I have learned and to share ideas and activities with my classmates. In my own classroom, I have shared my blog with my students. Some of my students even decided to go home and create their own blog with the help of their parents. Blogs are a great way to communicate and share ideas and activities with classmates, colleagues, students, and parents. A teacher could use it to communicate with parents, share excellent examples of your students' work, or share practice activities with both students and parents. However, I generally use my own class website to do these things, including providing a calendar of classroom plans/homework assignments, links to Math resources, and Reading/Language Arts resources.  I also have links to the school calendar and the district website.  Students and parents can send me messages using a comment box as well.  When these comments are submitted, they are sent straight to my email inbox.  Although I don't include any class photos, I would certainly love to.  However, our school is pretty strict about using pictures of our students online.  If nothing else, I would love to let them create technology projects that could be displayed online for parents and visitors to see.  I think both students and parents would love to see their pictures and activities online.

Thing #2 - Setting up blog, creating avatar, & posting

When I created my blog, I wanted a blog name that was easy to remember. Using alliteration was an easy way to do this. Originally, creating the blog was a little difficult at first. However, now it is very easy to add posts whenever I want. Creating the avatar was fun! I tried to create an avatar that looks somewhat like me. I love wearing pink and my dogs are my best friends, next to my husband of course!

Thing #1 - Lifelong Learning

The life long learning habit that I think is the easiest for me is setting goals. When I think about the hardest is is a tie between viewing problems as challenges (or learning opportunities) and, believe it or not, play! Sometimes with working full time and trying to go back to graduate school, I leave out the "play" in my life. These are things like taking time to exercise, get in the tanning bed (and I even have one), spending time with friends and my pets, etc.

I would like to find Web 2.0 tools that would help lessen my load instead of adding something else to it. As far as setting up this blog, I have had it for a while already. When I first created it, it took some figuring out because I had never created anything like it before. However, once I did it, it is like second nature now.

Matt

Chloe

Bandit

Appearing Angels

This is my photoshopped image of Haley, my yorkie. I titled it "Appearing Angels" because Haley passed away in December 2009. With the magic of technology, we can keep her memory alive.