Using UEN!

I believe that UEN will be a a great layer to add to my teaching foundation. There are so many excellent resources available. Sample lesson plans will be great for ideas and a quick fix. The lesson plan creator will help me in making quality lesson plans where I don't leave any thing out. Sometime you have knowledge in your head that someone else may not have so the lesson plan may not be useful to them, but the lesson plan creator is complete in the information it asks for. Having a link into eMedia, Pioneer Online Library, and Wimba Room Management will add another dimension to my classroom as well as the resources and knowledge that I can offer my students. The students will be able to receive a variety of examples and learning techniques so that the information hits base to students of all learning styles, visual, audio, hands on. It will also be nice to have the core standards and objectives so accessible.

Blogs in Education!

I think that blogging is a great way to help children learn to use technology and improve their writing! If each student had a private blog that only the student, the teacher, and their parent could access they could keep a journal as they improve their typing skills and computer usage skills. Also with student blogs at the end of the year as a gift with funding help from parents you can print off the entire blog and they bind it into a book. I think this would be a fun keepsake for them to have and one that would keep better than the little journals normally given. I just thought of another pro to blogging journals. If you as the teacher want to read over them you don't have to worry about taking their journals home, having them get lost or ruined. You can just look at their posts where ever you are that has internet. Also I think blogging is a great way to keep parents updated on class activities that have taken place and what's coming up. Getting the parents involved with their students will be beneficial for the classroom as well as students individually. It's a simple and eco-friendly way to communicate with parents and get input. Simple give each parent the address and all the same password to login with and it would be easy-peasy!!