Reflection

 I think having a blog to share educational ideas could be very useful. I have ideas brimming all of the time, but they can fizzle out when I find I do not have the medium to express those thoughts and ideas.  There is so much information out there for teachers and also new tools that are coming out all of the time. It is truly going to take teachers from around the globe to come together to help each other, and a blog could certainly be the format that could be helpful. Many teacher already use this method and have found great success. 

At home, I want my students to spend time being children and not spend their time behind a screen. The only homework I assign is to either go outside or read/listen to a book for at least thirty minutes. Even thirty minutes is not truly enough time, but it is a minimum. Where I can see a blog being a good tool to collaborate with students, I didn't want to take this blog in that direction for that particular reason - I don't want my students to be on screens at home as often as they usually are. So, for my assignment, I made my audience other teachers and focused my collaboration efforts on my professional peers rather than my students. Even though that is the direction I wanted to take on this assignment, I did include ways for students to use collaboration in the classroom via ThingLink. I am excited to have found this tool and will play with it more in order to incorporate it in my classroom now. 

Overall, this certainly was a learning experience for me. Even though I use technology in my classroom quite a bit, I usually learn best by watching others use a device or tool. I admit to getting flustered with new technology or tools at times. I had to leave my comfort zone and find web based tools that I was unfamiliar with in order to complete the assignment. Even though I am very familiar with ABCya!, I didn't think it would fulfill all the requirements for the assignment and I therefore wanted a second web based tool to post about in the blog.