Project 3

For project #3 I will be working solo. While I would like to submit something for the competition, I really don't have the extra time to get together with other people to create something.

My focus area for the project is on parent teacher communication regarding grades and assignments. There are many sites that enable parents to see their student's work firsthand and also access their grades regularly. While some schools use particular programs, I'm going to investigate free sites that I can be using at any school I work in. I hope to become familiar with posting assignments, creating a gradebook, and communicating simply with parents.

Internet Safety For Students

I think one of the best things we can be doing to ensure that the internet is safe for our students is to do a little detective work before sending students out to do projects using the internet. We can find sites that are reputable and safe and suggests those sites to students to use on homework and projects. Additionally, this will prevent them from looking elsewhere to find information.

I also think it's important to talk about internet safety. With your school, present guidelines to your students regarding information they send over the internet and avoiding harmful viruses. In the health major, we discuss improving communication. This would be a great place to discuss internet language and what things we share over chat rooms and elsewhere over the internet.

Video Chatting

For this week's assignment, I did a video chat with my sister in NYC. It was a little confusing to get started but using skype, it went pretty smoothly. The delay was a little frustrating and sometimes I could hear her voice before I saw the picture but overall, it was a good experience. I think I could use this in the classroom by having conference calls with busy parents who aren't able to come into the school. The visual affect adds a lot more to the experience and I think the parents would enjoy seeing their student's teacher rather than just speak with them. This may also be a good way to keep in touch with other teachers who teach in my same field of education. They could show me the things they're doing rather than just tell me. This may also be helpful if you wanted to have a guest speaker who is far away.