pinterest.com

Pinterest is one of my all time favorite websites! It is a virtual pinboard where you can organize and share things you love. They have everything you can possibly imagine, from home decor, photos, fashion, books, recipes, and best of all craft ideas and lesson plans! Not only is this a great website for all women... but it is great for teachers! You begin by creating you own "pinboards." I have a range of pinboards from fashion to recipes and even my future wedding plans! (HA!) It a great site to browse on, but be careful you may become addicted. I have found many craft ideas for holidays and also many art projects for school subjects. You can even search specific grade levels, and many ideas will come up for lesson plans and art projects. When you click on the pin, it will take you to a blog, which can lead you to find even more fantastic things! I highly recommend pinterest to EVERYONE!

Why Wordle?

Lets make word clouds! Wordle is a tool that generates word clouds using words that you provide. Words that are used most often are large and words that are used the least are small. You can change the color, font, and layout of you word cloud. This is one way to share spelling words with students, or you could simply create a poster for your classroom. (Mom, this would be a good way to display sight words!) Here is an example of a wordle use the US constitution:

“US Constitution” by Jonathan

 

 

 

Click on this link to get started using wordle:

http://www.wordle.net/

blogs blogs blogs

When a parent asks their child, "What did you do at school today?" about 9 out of 10 times a child will say, "nothing." Well, I've got a new way for you to share with parents what happened at school today.You probably here a lot about blogs and blogging, but did you know this can also be a great tool to use in the classroom? This is a great way to interact with parents and share with them what their child is doing at school. You can document daily activities and projects in your own classroom so parents can see their child's progress. This is also a fun way for grandparents, aunts, and uncles to see what's going on too!

For older students they can do some blogging themselves. You could create a blog for them to use as a resource guide for any educational subjects you would like, or you could create a blog for assignments and projects for the student to use as a reference. This is a great for students to keep on task, and I have had a teacher blog for one of my college courses and I loved it.

Adding pictures is a great way to share art projects!

Getting started is easy and FREE! I recommend using edublogs.com or blogger.com. Edublogs is used for education reasons, but blogger is a bit more fun. With blogger you can change the background and personalize your blog more. Christmas break is right around the corner and that would be a great time to experiment and explore the ways you can use blogging in your own classroom. I encourage you to get started!

My blog

 I am a third year college student majoring in Elementary Education, and I have decided to create a blog to share the fabulous things I am learning through the VCSU Elementary Education program. So for all you teachers out there, I hope this will give you a few new ideas for your own classroom! I am currently taking an Education Technology course and I have a lot to share with you. Hope you enjoy it!