I created a Slide Rocket presentation on my experience through the ECMP 355 class. This discusses where I’ve been, where I’m at now, and what I’ve learned along the way.
Enjoy! 🙂
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Tech Task #7
What makes a good blog?
After searching through a few teacher’s blogs (both elementary and high school), I have formed my own opinion of what makes a “good” blog. There are many components that make up a good blog, the first being that the blog is visually pleasing. By visually pleasing I am referring to the blog having some colour to it (so not just black and white) and possibly some pictures and videos. I found that with blogs with these factors, I was more willing to explore the blog and read the posts.
This is an example of a colourful blog full of photos (Shaelynn Sevyk’s blog).
The second component is the blog provided resources for both the students and the parents. Providing resources for the students I think is extremely important, especially of the students themselves, because if students are having trouble in the class or just want to look up more information, they can do so easily from the blog and have accurate information since the teacher chose it. As for the parents, the resources for them are on how to help their child with homework. This is important because if a student asks his/her parent(s) for help with homework, the parent(s) will be able to provide the proper assistance for their child.
This is a screen shot of Ms. Cassidy’s Classroom displaying resources for parents.
The third component that makes a “good” blog is that it provides examples of students work. First of all. This shows what students have done so parents know what their children are doing in class. Secondly, the students can feel proud that their work is being posted online and that everyone can see it. Lastly, this could be useful for other teachers to get ideas for what they could do in their class with their students.
This is an example of student’s work being displayed on Ms. Cassidy’s blog. If you go to the blog (see link below) you can see each individual student’s work under their own blogs with she has linked to her own blog.
Another component is to have a reminder’s and a schedule. This I think would be great for both parents, students, and teachers. For parents, they can see if their child has any homework due or coming up and what their children are learning. For students, this could be a great way for them to remember what projects are coming up, what is due, and any other reminders they might need to know. This is always good because then students don’t have an excuse that they didn’t know the homework was due. For teachers, this is a simple and easy way to remind students about homework and any upcoming school events. This is also a nice way for the teacher to stay organized and prepare for lessons.
Once again from Ms. Senyk’s blog, here is an example of a schedule (left) and reminders (right tab)
Lastly, using tags and categories to classify the blogs and posts are another component of a good blog. If students, parents, or teachers want to look back at any blogs/posts but can’t remember the title or which section their found it under, they can just search any relevant tags or categories that it could be under (or even if they just want to search under a general category or tag then they can just search it and see what comes up).
This is an example of tags (words above the categories) and categories from Mrs. Rose’s blog.
(This may seem like quite a bit but one point I’ll mention and that you need to keep in mind is that no blog had all of these, this is just a compilation of what I found on the blogs that I liked)
As for things that I didn’t like about blogs, there were only two that I could think of. The first was that some of the blogs did not make any posts, or blogs, and only had pictures and videos of students work. Maybe I’m just hung up on the concept that I think a blog should have actual blogs or writing in it, and what I found was that there was maybe a sentence or two explaining the video or picture and that was it. This might be great for the lower elementary grades but I guess what I was looking for was a bit more written explanation as to what and why they did an activity or something along those lines. The second aspect of some blogs that I didn’t like was they they had pictures that were too big and either cut into words so I couldn’t read them or they were blurry. It made the blog seem very unorganized and uncared for. I know this was probably not their fault but this is how I was left feeling.
Here are a few of the blogs that I looked at that display what I’ve discussed:
Miller’s English 10 Classroom Blog (High school)
Marvelous Math with Mrs. Rose (High school)
Ms. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog (Elementary school)
Shaelynn Senyk’s Classroom Blog (Elementary school)
Tech Task 6 – UbD Lesson Plan
Note: the pictures in the document take some time load but they do work!!
Tech Task 5
Here is my Prezi on why teachers should/shouldn’t use technology in the classroom. For my three links, I used two websites with readings and a YouTube video.
Tech Task #4
Here is a sample of a VoiceThread that I created. It discusses the first step of the cognitive strategy which is an important strategy that I hope to use in my future math class.
Tech Task #3
Here is a sample survey I made using Google Docs
Tech Task #2
Hello!
Here is a peer-reviewed journal that I found using my university’s library database. This article discusses using Google Apps in the classroom. It’s short, sweet, and to the point! Enjoy 🙂
Ashley McMurchy 