BlogWatch

By now you should have chosen the grade level and subject area that you will be focusing on for the semester. Becoming familiar with these standards will allow you to create projects that could be used in your future classroom. What surprised you about your standards? Which ones lend themselves to incorporating technology? How do the standards differ from what you learned in that grade level? Is it possible to teach at a LoTi level 3 or 4 using these standards?

On Thursday we watched a video about an elementary school in North Carolina to see a model of technology integration at lower LoTi levels. Today we'll watch a short video from a high school in Gulfport, Mississippi to see some examples of technology integration at high LoTi levels.

Viewing models of technology integration and conducting virtual observations of classrooms are good ways to become familiar with how to incorporate technology into your curriculum - bridging the gap between digital immigrants and digital natives. Keeping an eye on educational blogs and journals is another way to learn technology's place in the K-12 curriculum. This semester you will select a K-12 school site or education-related weblog to monitor on a weekly basis. The purpose will be to learn how technology is currently integrated into classrooms and to begin to understand the use of emerging technologies in K-12 education.

A good place to start in Anne Davis' blog from Georgia State: Edublog Insights. Anne was an Instructional Technology Specialist for Rockdale County Schools for many years and now works in the School of Education at Georgia State. Anne is on the cutting edge of how blogging can be used in K-12 classrooms. I keep an eye on her blog to know what is current in this emerging area of technology integration. In addition to providing current information about blogging in schools, Anne also provides links to other "edubloggers" on the web. This is a good starting point for choosing your blog to watch.

Other starting points to find an edublog or school website.
*Any Georgia school system can be found by typing in the following URL:
--http://www.districtname.k12.ga.us (i.e. http://www.rockdale.k12.ga.us)
*EdBlogger Praxis - find a list of pioneer edubloggers here
*Bud the Teacher - find another list of relevant sites here
*Do a search in Google using relevant search terms such as: technology integration blog, school blog, etc.

Make sure that you are selecting a school site or edublog that focuses on an area of interest in education - some edublogs focus only on using blogs in teaching and learning.

After you've selected your blog/school website to watch for the semester, you'll want to post it for the class. We'll use a site called BlinkList to keep track of this. This is the link to our class Blinklist: http://www.blinklist.com/edit2000. You will be given the login and password during today's class.

Add the "Blink this Site" button to your browser toolbar and Blink your blog/school website. Add information about why you chose this site and add "blogs to watch" as your tag so that we can keep these organized.

For Thursday:
1. Blink your blog/school site and tell why you chose it.
2. Look over the Productivity Tools Project - we'll start this project on Thursday. Please do not start on any of the projects as some of the descriptions may change. I just want you to be familiar with what we will be discussing in class on Thursday.
3. Read the short article about Educational Blogging that was distributed in class.