Over the last few months I have been on a steady diet of technology. Now it is time to incorporate all of the new ingredients into my professional practices. In doing this, I go straight to my classroom and think about the e-sources we have at our school: Internet, smartboard, data projector, document camera, etc. Now, the task at hand becomes figuring out what I can and can’t access at Owen Middle School. The guardians of content, at Buncombe County Schools, approve and deny in a never-ending drama. One day YouTube is available and useful. Five minutes later it’s out of reach and off limits. Pinterest – no dice. On and on the saga goes. Wait, YouTube is back and now I can’t reach Lexipedia. In the end, it’s essential to have many tools ready to go. Variety is the key. When the kids get tired of Wordle, give ‘em Worditout, which is essentially the same, plus a few more features.
Of all that I have done recently, I see Weebly as the centerpiece. I started creating the site immediately after introductions. In less than thirty minutes, the bones of my new website were up and running. An hour later, it was fully operational and running for my students and their parents. After using the clunky and complicated website that was offered through our school system, Weebly seemed like a leisure activity. I was posting and blogging on an easy and simple weekly basis, which fit well into my busy schedule and created a strong and useful link between my classroom and my students/ parents. Good times.
Twitter proved to be the next piece of true potential in my new technological toolkit. Once again, ease is what makes this useful for me. Like my new website, this was and is easily accessed and updated from my smartphone. When a thought pops, I can quickly post it to my feed and keep parents up to date. Whether it’s a new resource for reading or the logistics on our next big project, everyone is in the loop. Hopefully, my Twitter following will grow as I use it more. At the moment, I only have a handful of parents following, but the response from that elite group has been enthusiastic.
So, what else have I been able to incorporate into my classroom? Lexipedia had proven to be a great resource for all my young writers. We are constantly burying overused and week words, so Lexipedia has proven invaluable as a powerful and simple-to-use thesaurus. As we are rolling into our poetry unit, Rhyme Zone will be introduced after our Thanksgiving break. Giving students the ability to easily and simply find rhymes, near rhymes, and more will only make writing original poetry meaningful and fun for everyone.
To wrap all of this together is the new array of publishing tools I now have at hand. Grades are good, but publishing is even better. It’s like having great stats. in the game and scoring along the way. Publishing student work is key to sealing the deal, and sites like Lulu make it an accessible reality. My goal: publishing a compilation of student work that can be purchased by students and family. Additionally, having students submit poems and stories to sites like figment and Teen Ink gives everyone a chance to enter and win. The possibilities are endless and totally accessible with the click of a mouse.