I haven’t updated in a *really* long time, but I think it’s because I spent all year fully integrating my classroom blog. It’s turned into the go-to place for students to find out what we did each day. It worked best last year when I did it myself, but my goal is for the students to take it over for extra credit.
I use Edublogs because I love WordPress, and even though my district pays for Gaggle (and we get a blog with Gaggle), I don’t qualify those as real blogs. They don’t have tags or categories, and those are relevant skills for my students to learn about and use. And I also pay for my account as well. There aren’t too many things that i pay for, but Edublogs is one of them.
It was really helpful when a student was absent and I could just send her to the blog to find out what we did that day. When students forget the instructions or need more help, I send them to the blog.
I am thinking about having my students create their own blogs (which I can do here) as a weekly learning log (?) or response to the essential questions or Big Idea of the unit, but I just don’t know how easily it will be to grade them, if I would even give them a grade.
The technology goals I have in mind for next year include:
- Fully integrate Edmodo
- Integrate Socrative
- Get my test banks in ExamView updated
- Create more Quia games
- Use my classroom games templates (maybe students can create their own games… Hmmm.)
- I want to create a SCVNGR hunt for extra credit for my students for the following lessons –
- Texas Renaissance Festival
- Dickens on the Strand
- Getting to Know Riley on campus
- King Arthur
- Grammar/Editing (finding mistakes)
- Use the Eggspert buzzer with my games more
- Figure out someway to to use my Whiteboard and e-Instruction remotes so that they aren’t just collecting dust in my room.
These are my ideas for right now. I’m sure that I’ll be happy if I can get one goal accomplished for the next year. 🙂
How to Skin a Cat 