After reading Chapters One and Two, in Will Richardson’s
book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, I
feel I have a better idea of weblogs and how I might use them with my own
students. Something that I am currently using with my students is YouTube. I have to do research ahead of time to make sure the content of the postings are
appropriate, but there are many cute books and song videos on the site that my
students really enjoy. An idea I got from Chapter One was Tess’s “WeatherRecipes” book on Flickr.com. The site has all the pages of Tess’s book so that
anyone can see it. What a great way for parents to see what is going on in the
classroom and also for extended family members to see what is going on either
at home or at school.
I thought I could use Flickr.com and start sharing photos with families about
what happens at school. Parents love to hear about what is going on in the
classroom, but now I can show them what is going on as well.
One technology tool that I would like to start using
in my own classroom would be a weblog to make a classroom website. I would like
to post my weekly activities students will be doing and post pictures of
student work and pictures of students participating in different classroom
activities. Something else I would like to create is a wiki for a parent-teacher
conference schedule or a schedule for parent volunteers in the classroom. I
could post available times and parents could sign up for times and others would
know what times were taken or available. This would make it easy for parents to
sign up and for me to not have to go back and forth with all the scheduling. I
could use this also when we need classroom supplies for various activities or
celebrations. Bill Chamberlain’s Fifth Grade Classroom Blog has tons of great ideas! Check out Meriwether-Lewis Elementary School’s site to see examples of a whole school site with many different teacher pages and
more great ideas!
Kelly, your ideas for using the tools with students and to inform parents are perfect. Why not start on some of these ideas now. Plus, you can likely use some of them to accomplish course projects.
ReplyDeletePlan to start soon!
DeleteKelly, in my search for blogs I found a site with a host of pre-k blogs. Look on my blog for the link!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteI would love to use a weblog to make a classroom website! I think that parents would really like being able to go online and see what their children are doing on a regular basis. If you try this out, let me know! I would love to see it.
ReplyDeleteI will let you know as soon as I start!
DeleteYour parents and your students would definitely love a classroom blog! The parents appreciate the updates on classroom activities and the students love to see their work/pictures posted on the blog. It is a lot of hard work but definitely worth it!
ReplyDeleteThanks for some motivation!
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