My thoughts on blogging...

I've always been a strong supporter of blogs and personal web sites. While I am not a techie and I could tell you JAVA or any other type of code, I think grabbing your own slice of the World Wide Web is important.


For starters, you know what's going on around the world, in other people's lives, and how they view ...well, everything. You can see raw talent through poems or short stories or songs that people all over the world post.


Using blogs in the classroom, especially a classroom centered on using technology in the curriculum for future teachers, is logical. If there are any students taking this class that have never blogged or never set up their own site, then it will be good to have a personal experience before delving into a classroom where knowledge of the high-tech world is ever-changing.


There are tons of options for lesson plans and curriculum tools that I think would benefit my future students. I'm a strong supporter of PowerPoint for lectures; it's more efficient for the teacher, and handouts of the slides can easily be copied for the students, allowing them to have access to the important points, and write down notes of their own.


Also, I think interactive demonstrations help students retain vital information. For example, if I am teaching grammar, interactive computer games and/or simulations can guide a students through the different methods of punctuation, sentence structure, and those lousy prepositional phrases.

As far as using blogging as a tool in the classroom, I would consider it. For my journalism students I would encourage an online website for the campus newspaper, since students are more likely to view a website or FaceBook than actually read the paper. Writers could blog about news, opinions, or even post videos of current events on campus.

For any English curriculum I would encourage personal web sites and blogs to sort of publish their own works, whether it be short stories or poetry.

All in all, I am very excited to learn about the many options I will have before me in the classroom, and the tools that are created every day to help students learn.