EDCT203: Week 1

Greetings! I hope the New Year has found you all happy, healthy and loving life.
The new year has brought a new quarter at school, and new group of classes. I'm still teaching all day Tuesdays and Thursdays at a local elementary. I was so glad to be back, I missed my kiddos soooo much!

I'm also taking an educational technology class. A class that requires a weekly blog entry. Lucky for me, I already had a blog set up. So for the next ten weeks, I'll be posting some class related things on here. Sorry in advance if my ramblings bore you!!

This week in class, we learned how to set up wiki pages. I use Wikipedia all the time but this was the first time I actually sat and created a page. We also learned about setting up pages through Google. I like that we were offered many templates to choose from there. I found a cute teacher-ish one. However, I wish I had thought about it before clicking on the cute teacher-ish one, because that sucker is really hard to navigate! But it's cute. And it has a place for me to put up a student of the month, so it's cool.

I can totally see myself using these pages as a teacher in the future. I think it would be a great way to keep parents up-to-date on what's happening in class. There's even a section where you can post homework assignments for the whole week. It can also be a way for parents to contact either me or each other.

Some of the ISTE Standards for Students that were used this week are:

• 1d because our work on the Wiki pages are a way that we can express ourselves either alone or as a group
• 2a and 2d because we collaborate and work together to keep our page updated and running. All of our ideas come together for the final product
• 5 (all) because responsible and ethical behavior and actions are expected when using the group page
• 6a because the wiki page is a technology application, and we learned multiple ways to utilize it.

Some of the ISTE Standards for Teachers that were used this week are:

• 3a and 3b because we can share what we learned tonight with our students and create wiki pages for our class with them. I was also thinking that a class wiki would be a good way to keep parents updated, and a way for them to communicate with the teacher.
• 4a, for the same reasons stated for Student standard 5, above.
• 5d, I think that using technology will make a school much more effective.

Well, that's it for Week One. Stay tuned for more!