Blogging

I think blogging has great potential in the classroom. It would be a quick easy way for teachers, parents and students to stay up to date and communicate with one another. The old rule about if you have a question then someone else probably has the same question could easily be addressed using a blog with one answer instead of someone having to answer the same question over and over. I think it is also a great way for students to communicate with one another whether it is their desk mate or a new friend across the country. It could be used as a way to enhance instruction by being able to get another person's take on a topic. It is a great tool for classroom instruction, if set up with rules and guidelines about common courtesy before you allow students to begin. While most of my families don't have home computers, I could see implementing this as a way to communicate with the parents who do have computers and internet access.

Threaded Discussions

The idea of threaded discussions is great for older students. As a kindergarten teacher, I cannot see how this would be application would be feasible to use in the classroom. It would take quite a bit of teacher/assistant time during the day to make this work. However, with older kids I could see this being a great way to discuss classroom topics outside of a discussion circle, thus allowing your less confident children a chance to participate as well. It is a pressure free way to express ideas with a group of people.

Social Bookmarking

I love the idea of social bookmarking. This could be extremely useful in the kindergarten classroom when doing web "research" with smaller children. I would go through and weed out bad sites and put only the sites I want the to go to on my bookmarking list and then allow them to explore safe, previewed websites. This could be used for research of a theme we are working on, or we could use it to allow the children a choice of websites to go to during free center time that would have educational games for them to play.
This also is a great way to travel with my favorites. Instead of always putting new links into my favorites I could place them into my bookmarkings and be able to access them from any computer that has internet access.

What is technology?

What is technology? The first thing that comes to mind is computer related/operated items. But after thinking more about this issue, I think that definition of technology is really the definition of electronic technology. Technology to me is anything that helps you adapt to your world/environment. By that definition, pencil, paper, shoes, etc. all would be considered technology. Technology does not always make your world easier, but I think it can help in making things easier to handle. Shoes makes walking much more comfortable for me. While trying to figure out how my car runs can be stressful at times, I know that there is someone out there who understands that aspect of technology. Technology is what you make of it. Technology can be used to change the old way of doing things. E books and movie books are a new version of the old book and tape center. Bookmarking allows your favorite sites to travel and have access to them from any internet accessible computer. Technology can give you the freedom to accomplish tasks in many different ways.

What is literacy?

As a kindergarten teacher, literacy to me means being able to read and write. We start at the most basic level and move forward. Children start out being able to read basic words and simple text and move on to being able to read novels, blogs, web pages, newspapers, etc. Writing goes along the same lines. First children learn to write their names, their friend's names, simple sight words, simple sentences, pages of writing, research papers, etc. Literacy is combining what you know about letter/sound relationship and then being able to apply it in written form.

First Blog

Welcome to my first blog! I have been learning many new and interesting things in this class. Yesterday we worked on threads, nothing too hard. Today we have learned about blogs. I knew what they were, but I had never blogged before now.