Reflection Blog

I think that it has been a great learning experience to be blogging with my classmates. I liked being able to talk with them about what we were learning and doing in our classes. I do feel however that if it had been a little less structured it might have been more beneficial. I know! Less structured is not what the college of Education wants, however, I feel that by being too structured we were not able to really let go and discuss things that were necessarily important to us. I think that a better blogging idea would include more discussion of what is going on in our classrooms. I think that it would be more beneficial say to blog about a good lesson we saw. Maybe in Literacy, maybe not. I think that these sort of blogs would be the most beneficial for me because I am always looking for different ways and ideas for lessons. I think it is hard to sift through what is good and what is bad. If someone talks about a lesson they saw or did then I can see what works. I think that to be truly beneficial a blog should be our honest conversations. Which I think for the most part, these were. I did feel that they were a little forced though in the topic. I know that to assign a grade there has to be some sort of structure and relation to what we are reading in class but I think that the intention of a blog is to have a place where you can unload your thoughts. A place where you can post your comments into the void and hope that someone else outhere feels the same way you do (or even disagrees) and will be willing to share your moment with you. I would like to see blogs more like that in the future if I am “persuaded” by a class to use them again. J

Response to Abbey's New Lit Blog

I am really glad that Erik showed us how to use that program/tool because I really would like to use it one day in my classroom. I also think it gives students the freedom to be creative and productive while doing something really beneficial! I also think that it is a great way to show parents what their kids have been doing, if you had a class website or something. I think it is important that the 3 of you are doing research in the libraries to see how you could make your project the best it can be. It is always very interesting to see the different layouts/set-ups of libraries but it also sometimes is disheartening when you see the various school libraries because sometimes some schools have way more than others. To have a library/media center be the center of attention in a school is really important and shows students that it is a place they want to be.