Blog Post 6

     At my high school, teachers had the option of whether or not they kept class websites. In the English department at my school, most of the teachers chose to keep their students informed through the use of a blog. I am focusing on the senior English classes at Columbia High School in Lake City, Florida. In these websites, the teachers posted different tools to keep students on track as they tried to complete assignments outside of class. Every teacher that had a website, and posted their syllabus on it. Specific directions for upcoming assignments were updated in conjunction with the syllabus. Some teachers opted to post their lesson plans for the year in addition to their syllabus for the class. A couple of the teachers chose to include a brief autobiography about themselves in their websites. Contact information was provided by each teacher. Student work could be accessed through a google classroom that some teachers had a link to on their websites, but not everyone could access this information as it infringed on the privacy of students. The websites are some of the most useful ways for students to collect information from their teachers. Pictured below is an example of one of my past teacher's classroom blogs and the website where you could access classroom blogs.

     Technology use in the classroom is the best way to ensure that my responsibilities as a professional are met efficiently and effectively. According to the podcast, the Microsoft Office Suite is one of, if not the most important tools a teacher can use to manage their classroom. Word and Powerpoint would allow me to save my work and lecture notes for years, rather than have to recreate a lesson each time a topic is brought up. If I use a word processor such as ever note to save my lesson plans, I can save any information I may need for my classes. This process of saving my plans digitally would save me time and keep my resources together as I taught similar material in the future. Chapter 7 gave me the idea of using GoDocs on a mobile device. This would make my work more efficient as I could always access and edit something that I was working on, if i deemed it necessary. Technology offers a streamlined approach to education that allows teachers to work from their old ideas rather than creating entirely new plans for every situation. I think these tools will become the most important tools I use in my future career as an educator. 

     In the Web Evaluation assignment, I learned a way to do group work without having to meet with other members in person. Wikis allowed my group to work on our project on our own time and at our own pace, which is so important for making sure our work gets done in spite of our busy schedules. I liked the Wiki project because it allowed me to interact with my first online group project in a low stress environment. We all got to grow together with this new information, rather than us being thrown into a project with more experienced people. The only part of the project I did not like was the fact that the instructions for our Wiki were confusing at first. Even this small problem was resolved as I got more involved with the project, and the directions became far more clear. The directions are the only part of the assignment that need to be improved, in my opinion. I can use the tools I learned in this project in my future endeavors as an educator in two very important ways. I can show my future students an easy way to accomplish group work, and I can collaborate with other instructors on lesson plans and teaching tools.