I can't believe my vacation week is over. I had the most wonderful time staying at Emily's this week and it is going to be very hard not see her every day now. Britt and Andy's wedding was amazing. As my dad said, there were a lot of "dos." The church was beautiful, the bride was beautiful, and the day was a little bit warm - but beautiful! I thought it was amazing that we got to see Monets and Renoirs at the rehearsal dinner - pretty high class for Winona!

Now I actually have to finish my homework for class this weekend. I still have a lot to do, but there are so many other things that keep distracting me. I want to go through my classroom and clean it up a bit. I want to work on my classroom library. I want to decorate!! I hope I can get it all done and still have time to do the things I want to do.

I am continuing to look at a lot of the social media tools we learned about during class. I hope I still have time to explore them all even after the busy school year starts. I think having my implementation plan in place will help me make sure I am using the things I learned. The English Companion continues to be my favorite site to visit every day. How exciting to find a place where other English teachers are always trying to improve their practice just like me. There are some pictures of some really cool classrooms on there, which just makes me want to decorate even more.

I just have to keep telling myself that there are still a couple of weeks left before I actually have to be ready and after this weekend, I should have more time to work on what I really want to.

Go, Go, Web 2.0!!

I'm finding this social media class very interesting. I was hoping that it would provide tons of information and resources on how to implement more technology and social networking into my classes and it is doing just that. My only concern now is that I won't have enough time to fully explore all of the exciting things I am learning before the busy school year begins.

The thing I am worried about the most with my implementation of Web 2.0 tools is that I am sure most of the sites are blocked at school. It often takes a while for our tech coordinator to review the websites to make sure they are appropriate so I will really need to plan ahead before using any of them in my classroom.

I think it will be excellent to have a social networking site for my classes. I can post helpful links and my students can comment on it. Also, I think students could use it to ask each other questions about their homework.

Finally, using social media will fit in PERFECTLY with my action research project for the M.Ed program which is on authentic learning. How much more authentic can you get than having students use tools they already enjoy outside of school and will continue to use long after graduation.

I'm sure Emily and I will have a great time reading our articles tonight!

#1

My first post. And that is all I have to say for now!