Monday, November 16, 2009

At The Teacher's Desk

This is an image of a gray and blue globe surrounded by computers and papers are flowing from the globe to each computer to represent networking though computers
The blog, At The Teacher's Desk, is one that I find to be very helpful. There are many experienced professionals that collaborate to make this blog a great, useful resource for educators. This blog is a part of my Personal Learning Network, and it is one that I will go to for many future references, I am sure. I have found several posts that were interesting to me and could be helpful to me as a future teachers. I like the post by Mr. Chamberlain, Teachers Need to Become Social Networking Experts. It talked about the importance of teachers connecting themselves to other teaches, and gave a great example about him asking for help on Twitter for finding games for students. He received a ton of suggestions from people that he didn't even know. This shows that we never know what can come out of trying something different. Another post that I found helpful was Jarrod Lamshed's Using Technology for Effective Communication . In this post, he explained how social communities such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as using a cell phone, can be good means of communicating with parents, if the parents are willing to check these things regularly as well.


I found an entertaining post that really caught my attention and made me think; it is called Pencils and Crayons to be Banned in Schools . The post sounded like an article from a newspaper, and it was discussing children's improper use of pencils by poking each other with them and sharpening them while they could be working. There was also the mention of colored pencils and how they stimulate creativity that is distracting in the classroom. At the end, the post said that the ball point pen is gaining popularity too and posed the question of what schools will do to handle that. It was obviously a joke, but it does grab your attention and make you think. Another good post, to me, was Mr. McClung's, Why I Blog. He discussed his reasons for blogging. He mentioned learning and sharing ideas with other teachers, and that is one point that makes me want to have my own classroom blog when I am a teacher. He also discussed criticism he receives for incorporating technology in his classroom, which is good for people to see and know that it is not always easy to introduce and try something new but it is worth the risk. There are several posts similar to the Google Wave post that explain and promote technological tools in educations. I find these helpful and ones that I need to pay close attention to in order to stay updated on new tools that will benefit my students and myself and allow me to incorporate technology into my classroom. I think that a collaborative professional blog, such as this one, At the Teacher's Desk, serves as a great resource for educators. More people contributing means that more ideas, suggestions, experience stories, and feedback are available, which are all tools in themselves.

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