Saturday, June 29, 2013

Thursday, June 27, 2013

RSS Week 2 Article

Edutopia: Connecting Teachers and Students to the Best Digital Tools. Viewed Thursday, June 27, 2013

What I found interesting within this article was that I completely agreed with the overwhelming need of my edtech within the classroom. Teachers/Adminstrators are asking for more help, for more time to search. The author of this article, James Steyer, offers up some help. Graphite. "A free online resource that combines independent reviews of edtech products."

Resource: Steyer, James. "Connecting Teachers and Students to the Best Digital Tools." Edutopia. N.p., 27 06 2013. Web. 27 Jun. 2013.

www.graphite.org

Week 2: Readings

This week's reading of "7 things you should know about...Blogs" got me thinking about how to truly use this form of writing. Honestly, I thought that a Blog was just a fancy webpage all about you. Another form of Twitter or Facebook, but I have decided that this is not the total package. A blog is used to really put your thoughts and ideas out there with connections. We are always asking our students to give evidence with their opinions and blogs are a way to do that. An effective blog doesn't just express, but informs others by sharing links, videos, and images besides our thoughts makes updating blogs worth the work.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I7Wk14VWK4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

YouTube video to inspire students/teachers to understand. This video can be used to start their writing, start discussion, open their minds. It was introduced to us during our MAISA ELA Conference as a way to inspire writing.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Reflection of my week so far: MAISA ELA Conference

Well, it is the end of our second day. I have felt that my district may be farther ahead in the game than I thought. Many of the educators here have worked on only one or two of the published writing units where I have done all of them in the fifth grade. Our faciliators are working hard to keep everyone working and moving on. 

My goal for this conference was to build my toolkit and network with other ELA educators so that I can learn from others at my same level. The discussions have brought out more conversation about classroom structure and strategies that work while in the Personal Narrative and now Literary Essay Units (this afternoon). I hope to be able to bring back to our district a bag full of tricks as we dive into the continually building of Writing Workshops.

Some sources we were introduced to today can be found my account: delicious.com/abklopf

As so, for those of you interested in what are MAISA ELA Units: http://oaklandk12-public.rubiconatlas.org/Atlas/Browse/View/Default

MAISA Conference Day 2

Another day dissecting the MAISA Writing Units. Another day of networking!

Monday, June 24, 2013

MAISA ELA Conference

Hangin' with a bunch of educators for the week...working with these units should be fun with Katie!

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Free Technology for Teachers: Byrne

Found on my Feedly...
Great article about the used of Google+. Now I have only used Google+ just recently for our Hangout with Kathryn. But my experience was great! I plan on diving a little deeper into Google+ since our district uses Google for our district-wide email and other programs.
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts: Richardson

Okay, so after reading Chapter 1 I realized I am one of those teachers that needs to be a learner. I thought that I was doing okay with using technology within my classroom, but many of the things Richardson says about the students being one step ahead of us is totally true. There have been many times (especially this week...talk about it later) that I realized my students could teach me so much better the ins and outs of the internet and other software tricks. When it really hit me was when a student asked if he could take over my overhead to show his presentation he was working on...WHAT!? You can do that? My mom, the media specialist at his school, just laughs and says "yes!"

My goal: become more acquainted with communication technology so that when I come back in the fall I am prepared to face my technologically advanced fifth graders!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Starting of another Blog...Read/Write Web

Looking forward to another chance to practice and learn online resources to enhance my teaching!