Personal+Reflections

Thursday, January 7, 2010
This is my last personal reflection and I am having a difficult time focusing on it. My mother-in-law was just told she has to be moved to a hospice facility because there is nothing more than can do for her. The first thing that popped into my mind was the photo album on the web. I am going to gather up as many pictures that I can find and put together an album of all of her children and grandchildren. They are the most important things to her and I think it would be uplifting. I also want to put together an album and have it playing during teacher conferences. I want to put up the pictures that I have already taken of their children doing their various activities. I know the parents would love seeing their children in a school environment.

Monday, January 4, 2010
I just got done joining the iknowclass group for Diigo. I wasn't interested in looking at what other people had posted, but the pictures in the last decade looked intriguing. I was absolutely horrified at most of the pictures. Some I had seen before, but most I had not. If I were a high school teacher, I would show these pictures to my students as a conversation piece. They would also be a great springboard to having them find their favorite pictures of the last decade. For my classroom, I could pick out the most appropriate ones to use as writing prompts. I am in the middle stages of teaching them about how important details are in a story or pictures. I could also manipulate the pictures and take out parts and see if my students can sense what is missing.

Sunday, January 3, 2010
I find the blogging portion of this class to be just like Facebook except I don't know most of the people in this class. I find it difficult to blog on my learning. It takes me awhile to process new ideas and then I have to go back and revisit what I have done. I can see how the blogging is beneficial for me because I have a difficult time remembering things that I have learned over a period of time. Blogging helps me to remember what my thinking was at the particular moment. I can see how some of my students struggle with retaining information. I have them writing in journals for math and language arts because I don't want them to forget their thinking around a specific topic. In math, they have a daily problem and they write down their thinking in their journal. They have access to that whenever they are struggling in class with problems that are related. This helps them cement their thinking because they are constantly practicing and revisiting their thought.

**Saturday, January 2, 2010**
The hardest module for me has been the online communication. I am having a difficult time finding something to put up on the voice thread. I have been through the explanation several times, but still don't understand what the purpose is or what is best to put up there. I have a couple of ideas, but I don't know if they make sense. I will give it a shot and see what happens. Once I figure this voice thread thing out, I think I could use it for CSAP preparations. I want to type a students writing prompt and then have other students grade it. We can talk about what positive things we see ( they stuck to the prompt or they wrote in complete sentences) and what they need to change ( they didn't use transition words or they need to work on their spelling). I usually do this with my promethean board, but I want to try this with the voice thread. I also like the voice thread because you can use other people's ideas and add to them or change some things around. I want to share this tool with my team members because they are into technology and are willing to try new things.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009
I have enjoyed getting to try out these new tools on the web. The one I have enjoyed the most is Google Earth. That one is the most applicable to me and my students. It was the easiest for me to learn and create. There are so many things that I want to do with Google Earth. I have already shared what I created with my teaching partner. She has used this tool, but didn't know that you could make a virtual tool. She just thought you could view certain places, one at a time. We have already talked about different ways we want to this tool. One specific way we want to use it is when we have our students write their holiday reports. They pick a country and study how they celebrate Christmas there. I want to show them what their country looks like on Google Earth. Most of them will never get to visit a particular country so I can do the next best thing and show them.