In the past, I have always done a weekly newsletter for my classroom and usually I will just email this out to all the parents each week. The problem with this was I would constantly get emails sent back due to parent's changing jobs, or personal accounts, or occasionally even be told by some parents that they simply didn't read it because it went to spam, or they just didn't have time! It was sort of sad because I felt that I put a lot of hard work into creating these newsletters, and they usually included a lot of important information, yet they often weren't even being read!! That's why I think including this type of information in a weekly blog, that parents can access on their own time, when it's convenient for them, will be a great tool. I won't have to worry about it reaching them via email, so I won't have to get any more returned emails, I can simply provide them with the link to my site and they can actively go there when they want to. I won't have to deal with either them or their child "losing" the newsletter, either because I printed it out and physically handed it to their child, because it will always be available on the internet, and therefore I will no longer have to hear that they "didn't get the information", however important it may be! If parent's now have a question, they will know where to go and look for it. Of course, the only drawback is that some parents may not have internet access, especially since I will be working in a lower income district this year, so I'm sure along with posting my weekly newsletter blog, I will have to continue printing it out and sending it home, but hopefully as we move into the future this will be a more common way of communicating and more parents will have access to viewing it. Either way, I'm looking forward to taking advantage of this new (and easy!) tool that I've learned how to use!
When I started this blog for this course, it was my first time using this type of communication. At first I found it to be sort of a chore that I was doing only because it was required for this class, but as the weeks went on, I found it to be a great outlet for my thoughts. I found it to be a place where, regardless if anyone was reading or not, I could write what I'm thinking and feeling, almost like a diary, but not quite as personal since I know it's out there in the public domain. Although I'm sure the only person reading my blogs is probably Dr. Z, I could see what a helpful tool this could be for me as a teacher. I will definitely be using this as a mode of communication in my classroom.
In the past, I have always done a weekly newsletter for my classroom and usually I will just email this out to all the parents each week. The problem with this was I would constantly get emails sent back due to parent's changing jobs, or personal accounts, or occasionally even be told by some parents that they simply didn't read it because it went to spam, or they just didn't have time! It was sort of sad because I felt that I put a lot of hard work into creating these newsletters, and they usually included a lot of important information, yet they often weren't even being read!! That's why I think including this type of information in a weekly blog, that parents can access on their own time, when it's convenient for them, will be a great tool. I won't have to worry about it reaching them via email, so I won't have to get any more returned emails, I can simply provide them with the link to my site and they can actively go there when they want to. I won't have to deal with either them or their child "losing" the newsletter, either because I printed it out and physically handed it to their child, because it will always be available on the internet, and therefore I will no longer have to hear that they "didn't get the information", however important it may be! If parent's now have a question, they will know where to go and look for it. Of course, the only drawback is that some parents may not have internet access, especially since I will be working in a lower income district this year, so I'm sure along with posting my weekly newsletter blog, I will have to continue printing it out and sending it home, but hopefully as we move into the future this will be a more common way of communicating and more parents will have access to viewing it. Either way, I'm looking forward to taking advantage of this new (and easy!) tool that I've learned how to use!
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This week I finally finished my Digital Story assignment. I have never attempted to create my own video before so I was proud that I taught myself how to use the iMovie software on my computer and come up with what I think is a pretty decent video for my first time! I made several revisions and ran it by my film industry mother who gave me some advice here and there and finally came up with my finished product. I learned so much about "Fair Use" and even took a quiz on it that was shared by a fellow student (http://www.copyrightkids.org/quizframes.htm) and did pretty well on it! I am glad that I have this knowledge now to take back and bring to my classroom this fall.
This week I also made contact (via email) with the other two 3rd grade teachers I will be working with this fall (since it's a new school I haven't met them yet in person!). I told them how excited I was to share with them what I've learned this summer. I'm really looking forward to working with them more then ever now that we've shared some information about our backgrounds. It seems we each have unique backgrounds, one in Special Ed, one in Art, and myself in Ed Tech, so I think we will make a great team when all our ideas come together as we put together this year's curriculum. As I've been working on my digital story for the past couple weeks, the topic of video and image copyrighting and sharing has been on my mind a lot, especially since my mother works in this field. My mom has worked in the film and television industry for most of her adult life, and for the past 15 years has owned and managed her own film and television research company. What this means is that she will research and find images and video clips of just about anything someone might want. Say you are making a movie and want a video clip of a person walking down the Hoboken waterfront during sunset, she will locate and sell you the rights to that video. She represents the owners of various images and videos so she has the rights to sell and share any of these videos. When I told my mom that we were learning about copyrighting in my class she was very interested to see the websites that we were reading and how it relates copyrighting to teachers. She was very glad to see that we were being taught about this since, as she explained, it is often an afterthought in the minds of most people when they go to share digital media with one another. I explained that this is a very relevant topic for us since these days teachers are using smart boards on a daily basis and sharing various media with their students. She agreed that it is a very important issue that definitely should be taught not only to teachers but also passed down to their students, since they are growing up in this digital media era and need to know the laws of sharing media with one another. I am interested to continue learning about this as the class progresses and hopefully master the ins and outs of it all so I can teach it accurately to my students this year!
I brought up an interesting topic in the discussion forum this week that I heard mentioned on the radio this week regarding mail delivery. Currently, mail is delivered 6 days a week, Monday-Saturday, however it has recently been proposed by the USPS to cut this back to delivery only 5 days a week, Monday-Friday (http://about.usps.com/news/electronic-press-kits/five-day-delivery/welcome.htm). The radio discussion I was listening to even mentioned that they've heard talks of the USPS possibly cutting down service to only 3 days a week. The article goes on to explain the deficit being mainly due to the trend of electronic mail and the decrease in volume of paper mail.
I posted this in the forum to hear what others thought about this proposal. I know that although many people still rely on their mailman to bring them their bills and other important documents, I have switched all my bills to paperless billing so the mail I get these days is mostly catalogs and/or coupons from various stores, most of it being junk mail which I find to be a waste of paper and a hinderance on the environment. I'm sure this sounds like a shock to many of the Digital Immigrants out there who still very much rely on their paper bills and other mail, but to most Digital Natives I'm sure the idea makes a lot of sense. I think it's a great proposal, and if it can somehow help our nation's deficit problem, I am all for it. After hearing Obama's address to the nation last night and the current status of our debt, I think anything that can be done to help reduce the deficit is a move in the right direction. This week I was finding it hard to decide what to blog about since so much of my feelings about this course I have put into my posts on the discussion board, so I decided to write about just that! The discussion board has been a really neat feature of this course and a new experience for me in terms of education. When I was in college, we used a discussion board for my Freshmen English class, but it was simply to post responses to readings for our teacher to read. It was not interactive the way that ours is in this course. I have found it interesting to hear so many of my classmates thoughts and feelings on various topics that you would not really get to hear in a typical classroom setting,. I think the anonymity of posting online makes way for more personal, intimate discussions and therefore allows for more interesting discussions. I know that there are lots of things that I've shared already that I would probably not have in a classroom looking face to face at my peers, simply because that setting is not as conducive to discussions and often revolves around teacher lead discussions, whereas here a lot of the discussions are very much student lead. Even though Dr. Z gives us a topic to start off with, lots of the discussions often goes off on tangents in other directions, which also has its positives and negatives. I've noticed some discussions go way off base, where people have started discussing things like vacations, weddings, etc., but the neat thing is as a reader you can choose to ignore those off topic conversations and stay on task if you choose to. Then there are also other relevant discussions that come up that may have not been thought of or shared in a typical classroom due to the time restrictions of a classroom setting , whereas in an online forum, students have the option to come back anytime they want and add to the conversation.
This has made me even more curious about using this type of online discussion forum in my own classroom in the future. I think it would allow for some great discussions that may not be possible in our actual classroom due to time restraints of the daily schedule as well as students feeling more vulnerable in a classroom setting and therefore less likely to share more personal feelings on a subject. The only problem is that I'm not sure how much access my students will have to computers at home and if this type of medium is going to actually be possible for my class next year, but I hope to someday be able to use this technology in this way! This week, I was excited to figure out a way to finally begin reading the Ormiston text, using a technology I had never tried before, Kindle! I have used a Nook before, my mother actually got one this year and uses it to read her books, but I don't own one so I've never tried downloading a book. I didn't even know that this technology was available for computer owners until I found myself in this desperate situation, not knowing when I would ever receive the textbook for this class. I consulted Amazon.com, where I originally ordered my paperback text from, and noticed that there was an option to download a "Kindle for Mac" application, and for free! I immediately downloaded it and then ordered the book to be downloaded to the app, and within seconds, there it was on my screen!! It was so simple and easy, and being so used to reading things on my computer anyway, I found this method to be a great solution to my problem! One that I now will probably use as my first option when searching for textbooks for future courses!
It's funny though, I am not able to cancel my order of the paperback book, and although I'd like that money back, I found myself secretly thinking that I would still like to have the actual book itself to put on my bookshelf since it's a text that I'm enjoying. I still think I'd be more apt to consult it again in the future if it's on my bookshelf as opposed to being a file on my computer. I guess there are some things that though they may be easily replaceable by modern technology, are still hard to let go of completely! As Dr. Zieger stated in her first post, I, like many of her previous students, felt a bit nervous about what to expect in this class. This is my first online course that I've ever taken, and although I consider myself a Digital Native, I was a bit apprehensive to sign up for a fully online program. So far though, after really enjoying all the links and assignments posted this week, I am feeling a lot better about my decision and looking forward to all the things I am going to learn and be able to put to use in my classroom! I have already found myself sharing what I have learned so far with family and friends, as I find the topics very relevant not only to my career, but to everyday life. After all, technology surrounds us and permeates through all that we do.
I have a lot of firsts taking place at this point in my life. This is my first blogging post ever, which is linked to my first website ever created, and I also will be working at a charter school that will be starting it's very first year! Although I am excited about being part of the inaugural class of teachers at my school, I also have some anxieties about what to expect. My school, Passaic Arts and Sciences Charter School, is supposed to be modeled after their sister school, Bergen Arts and Sciences Charter School, which is a very technologically oriented school. Their website is impressive, as is their use of technology in the classroom, which was part of my motivation to get a position at their new school, PASCS. But with anything new, there is always a learning curve and I'm sure it will take a little while to get everything fully up and running, which I am also sure will mean a lot of extra work for me and my fellow teachers! I know this will be a challenging year, but I look forward to the challenge and am excited to hopefully be able to share with you throughout the year how I am putting to use everything that I am learning in these courses! |
Kim BogdanI'm a 3rd Grade Elementary School Teacher excited to learn creative and innovative ways to bring my students closer to the world around them... one webpage at a time! ArchivesCategories
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