Journal #7

In this class the RSS feed was new to me.  I had been apart of things such as Twitter, Teachers Pay Teachers, and Pinterest.  However, the RSS feed allowed me to follow a few teachers who I liked their style of classroom and was able to constantly visit their blog. I found a dictated sentence blog that will give me preset sentences I can grab whenever I need a quick sentence to assess the kids on.   It gave me links to new resources and a little piece of mind knowing other teachers were going through similar things.  This also came from the affinity group of new teachers.  It is encouraging to see other's successes but also relief when you realize you are not the only one who feels like they are treading water.  I want to start gearing my Twitter for professional use rather than the college gossip I used it for previously.  I think because of the ease of Twitter, I will be more apt to check it more frequently and it will be the best tool in keeping connected and learning new things related to teaching.

Journal #6: Self Reflection

So far the journey in this class has been a little like a whirlwind.  I have truly enjoyed every class and what we have learned, even though at times I am thinking, "What did he just do".  Even when doing homework, I have liked how the book is interactive and you get to practice what they are telling you. This kind of approach works for a hands on learner like myself.
I found in this class the easiest thing for me to understand was the linking of files, which is ironic because that was my latest issue.  However, the book work and lab component came much easier to me then weeks prior or past.
The most difficult part for me is css.  Knowing how to format and doing everything perfectly has been a challenge.  I can see why web designers stick to one type of job and leave the other things to other workers, building a site by yourself is hard work.
Even though it was practically done for me with most of the formatting, the most rewarding homework exercise was one of the last exercise because you could actually get a feel of what you can do with a plain web page to make it your own.

file:///Users/NicoleJenee/Documents/GED%20512/512/Book/13-7.html
I hope by the end of this class I will be more confident in the source formatting and using css to make it "pretty".

Journal #5 Twitter

Using Twitter in the academic setting is a new idea that has much controversy.  Many teachers struggle with just allowing their students to get onto Microsoft Word, and now integrating a social media into class just might push them over the edge.  I think that students would become more engaged if twitter was used in the class not only because it is interactive and fun, but they would feel successful because they already know how to navigate this site.  I see this being used in higher education such as high school, maybe junior high.  It could be very beneficial in classes such as History, Science, Government, Economics. Students could use #s to find out about a certain topic.  For example if students were trying to get current event topics they could type in #news, #currentevent, #(their city),  #(current topic). 

How would this be useful in elementary?
I can see it in older grades, but elementary is still a little fuzzy.  I could possibly use it also for research purposes, because you can follow pages such as, "FunFacts", "Space", etc.  I would probably just make it a whole group activity rather than individual profiles, as that could be against parent's rules.

How could they monitor inappropriate posts?
I am not familiar with twitter to the point of being able to filter posts.  I would think that the districts wifi would stop some inappropriate posts.