final paper

For my final paper, I talked about the good and bad of technology, focusing mainly on the ways it can be used appropriately in the classroom, such as research via databases.

E-newsletter

For my newsletter, I am using a few different pieces. I am creating it more specifically for teachers and/or parents. I included my author of the month, the book fair, a section on blogging and a fun facts about the month section.

Poster Project

For my poster project, I decided I would do "Author of the Month." I also decided to pick an author that I think it amazing (Jon Scieszka). His books are funny and his web site is impressive!

Hyperstudio

For my PowerPoint presentation, I'm discussing Hyperstudio and how it can be used in the classroom. It's a great tool after students have been writing and would like to illustrate it in an electronic way. I find the program to be rather tricky to use, so it may be hard for student's whos fine motor skills are still developing.

My Web Site

Check out my website at:
http://students.css.edu/nduff/index.html

Blogging in the Schools

Before reading the articles for this week, I must say I had very little background information on blogging. While I do use Facebook like most college students, I never felt like I needed to have a blog before. After reading the articles, I was really impressed by some of the ways people use blogs in the schools.

One way I thought was very creative was the Talkback Project. Reading what kind of work was done and how success it was once the criteria was more established for the second year, I think this is a lesson that could be adapted in many ways to work with all ages of students. While I love the idea of the buddy program with older students, even having younger students set up a blog where they can do daily writing assignments and the teacher can leave comments for them online would be a nice way of introducing more technology into the classroom and allowing students to create a space for themselves to write. I also think it would be a good idea for media specialists to have a blog that the teachers and parents can look at and comment on. The media specialist could summarize what classes are doing for the week and also post if they will be doing anything in the future that students should know about. This would also allow a space for parents and teachers to make comments about how their student is reacting to the work they have been doing and teachers could even post what they are doing in the classroom to try to collaborate with the media specialist on a project. Another idea that I thought was interesting was to have the students blog about books they have read and basically have a whole blog devoted to book reviews by the students. It's a great way to have students summarize what they've read and be able to see what their peers are reading. If students can see that another classmate was really into a book, it might inspire them to read that one as well and they can talk or blog with one another about the book.

Knowing more about blogs and blogging, I personally feel like they are a good way for students to interact and exchange information in a creative environment. There are some things about blogging that still make me slightly apprehensive about blogging. I feel like safety is always a big concern and conveying the importance to students about not giving out personal information. I also think some students may struggle with blogging. My roommate and I were discussing it and she said she had to blog of a class before and hated it because she likes to be able to look at her work on paper before submitting it, so she would print all of her blogs out and edit them before the would submit them. I think this is something teachers would really need to be conscious of and make sure that students are still doing work and responding to each other in ways that are not online because of how important personal contact is, especially at their age. Overall, I feel blogging is a good idea and a great tool to use in a classroom for certain projects and is worth introducing and using in the classroom.