Blog Post 6

I decided to explore outside of Florida and I chose to visit the California R-1 Elementary School Website. It immediately showed their school mascot on the home page. There’s a calendar with lots of information about different events coming up, like teacher conferences. In the class pages’ section, I clicked on Ms. Doll’s 3^rd grade class. It opened up to a cute flyer with kid superhero images. Publicly, lots of upcoming dates were listed about movie nights, fundraisers, and homecoming spirit week. Ms. Doll also included short paragraphs of what her students were currently learning in Reading, Science, Math, and Writing. Next, I clicked on Mrs. Howard's 2^nd grade class link and it led me directly to her public class Facebook page. It included upcoming dates, pictures from their recent field trip to see caves, and it even included videos of her class’s last play production.

http://es.californiak12.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=531980&type=d&pREC_ID=1047836

I envision myself using technology to make my teaching career more efficient and effective. Simple word processing tools like formatting, grammar checking, tables, graphics, and archives will make my life easier day to day. I’ll have to utilize electronic spreadsheets to keep track and organize student’s grades. Also, for more in depth learning, having tablets with apps in the classroom would be helpful. Such as a reading app that can be tailored to specific student’s reading level, so the child can get exactly what they need.

When we visited the Technology Sandbox, I had the chance to try out a 3D printer pen. As I was writing my name with it I noticed that it would be a very useful tool in the classroom. Using the pen, I could create multiple words that my students could arrange into different sentences and ideas. I could use the words to teach nouns, adjectives, and verb examples. I want to teach young elementary schoolers so this tool would be a fun element in the classroom. They would actually get a chance to pick up and hold colorful words. Also, for teaching my students about shapes, a smartboard would come in handy. Instead of having to freehand different shapes, I can drag a perfectly angled one onto the screen, while still being able to write all over it like a regular white board.