Reflection Journal 2

The Subject: Ed Galaxy
Ed Galaxy is one of the most active blogs that I am currently following. The author Kevin Cummins updates his site almost every day with the latest technology information. In the Month of March there have been eight posts already. Ed Galaxy has a wide variety of information posted on the site from whiteboard activities, games, intelligent test, and create your own on-line picture books. The white board activities are from a wonderful website called White Board Resources at http://www.philipcrammond.com/closediwb/. At this site readers learn how to teach a variety of subjects using white board technology. Another topic posted March 10, 2010 discussed a Multiple Intelligent Test offered on the site BGFL Multiple Intelligences at http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm. Readers can take the test and discover how they learn best. I took the test and found it very interesting.

My Participation:
Most of the information on Ed Galaxy was straight forward and did not leave much room to make comments except for thank you for providing this information. I did choose to leave a comment on the article about Magic Studios, www.magicstudio.com. This site gave users the opportunity to create educational games for their classes; however, I found this site difficult to manage and was not free as stated. I left a comment March 8, 2010 asking if I was creating my game in the wrong category, since every topic I wanted to use seem to have a fee. Currently, I have not received a response.

My Learning:
One of the most interesting sites discussed on Ed Galaxy was create your own on-line picture book. I visited this site on March 2, 2010. This site was fun to use and full of creativity for students. I learned how to create my own picture book that could be used in the classroom with children. I created a pattern book similar to Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See by Eric Carle. My book was called Alien, Alien What Do You See. The website URL is http://www.storyjumper.com. In the future this would be a great site for beginning reading and writing students.

The Subject: Hope Foundation
Hope Foundation Blog promotes discussion on a wide variety of topics: Administrators, Announcements, Assessments, Collective Bargaining, Educational Policy, Parents, Pedagogy, Politics, Social Issues, and several more. They have a blog comment on each topic at least once a month and sometimes more. The information on the Hope Foundation Blog was very useful and informative for a teacher or soon to be teacher.

My Participation:
I have been checking into Hope Foundation periodically throughout the last month and was most interested in the following blogs: Has the classroom environment changed, and Teaching the Next Generation. The Has the Classroom Environment Changed is about the problems teachers face with the mainstream of children in the classroom. This particular article commented on the case of a six year old girl that was put into handcuffs because she had a tantrum at school and the teachers could not control her. One blogger felt like mainstreaming these types of students was difficult and teachers were not given the proper assistance in the classroom to handle them. On March 8, 2010 I commented that the handcuffing seemed to be a bit extreme for a six year old and ask what other solutions could be done. Once I placed my comment I received an email from the administrating staff stating that they would comment on it if no one else did. As of right now, I have not received an answer to my question on this topic.

The other article that intrigued me was Teaching the Next Generation. This article was about the importance of introducing the latest technology advancements into the classroom. I found the article inspiring, since I am just figuring out most of this technology myself. I was the first to comment on the article and posed a question on how to implement technology when your students know more than you. I received two inspiring answers about how important it is for students’ self-esteem to be-able to demonstrate their skills to the teacher and actually teach the instructor.

My Learning:
This site has been extremely enlightening on the world of education. The site gave users hope, hence the name Hope Foundation. I have learned there are great resource sites that can be useful for future teaching advisement. As a future teacher, it is important to be informed about the latest news and technology in education to provide the most cohesive teaching environment.

Subject: Ozge Karaoglu http://ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org
Ozge Karaoglu Blog is full of technology information. The author updates her blog once a week with a topic of the week. Her most current blog was about tools that help you build and create websites. She posted it on March 11, 2010. She gives the reader links to sites that will enhance your teaching lessons. One recommended site was the Alpha Edemy; which helps users create an online course for their students. In another blog, Ozge wrote about how you can add Widgets to your blog on March 2, 2010. This blog gave the users sites that would allow them to add widgets to their own blogs.

My Participation:
When I checked Ozge Karaoglu Blog on March 6 and found the article about widgets I was excited to learn more about them. Ozge assumes that the reader already knows what widgets are; however, I was not very clear on what they are. I decided to create some widgets on my blog, like she suggested and followed her directions to install them. After I finished my widget addition to my blog I decided to comment on Ozge Karaoglu’s site about her article. I commented that her article was even useful to a new blogger like me, and I appreciated the information. Just look at the bottom of my blog for my new widgets!

My Learning:
Ozge Karaoglu’s blog gave me the right tools to learn how to post widgets on my blog. It is an extremely useful blog that has amazing resource information on it. As a beginner blogger, I was able to find information on how to enhance my blog, website and my teaching abilities with the latest technology. Technology is important for teaching the next generation, and I will definitely be using Ozge's information in the future.

Subject: National Geographic
The National Geographic website is a fantastic site for the latest news in science. This site has an Environment section that provides several informational subjects such as Environmental Home, Green Guide, Global Warming, Natural Disasters, Habitats, and Freshwater. The site is updated every day and can be a great resource for teaching science.

My Participation:
I have been using the National Geographic site as a learning tool and resource for my Global Warming Web Quest. The site has a Global Warming section: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-causes. The Global Warming topics are Causes, Effects, Science, and Solutions. I have been reading and collecting information from this site for future teaching assignments. The site does have an area to buzz up an article, but it did not have a place to put comments and discuss topics. There is a blog section on the site called Green Living. This blog discussed ways to live green and it has about 5 postings a month; however for the month of March there has not been any new post. The last blog posted was on Feb. 22, 2010 about how Google can buy and sell energy now. The topics did not lead to a discussion yet for me, but I am hoping they will be an article of interest for me to post a comment in the future.

My Learning:
I have learned a great deal of information on Global Warming and the causes of it. The National Geographic webpage is a great site for student learning. The site contains games and quizzes on it that will be useful for my future students. I also liked that the site offers solutions to fixing the global warming problem. I think it is important to have students learn about what can be done to fix the problem. In the future, I would like my students to come up with their own solutions to fixing the Global Warming problem.