Blogs Around the Country..

Well tonight I've been looking up other schools around the country that use blogs also. Here is what I found..

The first school, or class, that I found that uses a blog is in Noel, Missouri. It is a 6th grade class at Noel Elementary School taught by Joe McClung. The blog seems to be just updates of current happenings going on in the classroom, such as lessons and projects. The teacher has also placed resource links on the side of the blog, I'm sure for the students to use on homework and such. An interesting touch, I think, is a list on the right side that includes all of the other classrooms in different states that have visited Mr. McClung's class blog. There is also a live video feed at the top of the blog, I suppose that allows the students and other schools to see what is happening live in the classroom. (I couldn't get the video to play on my computer?) It seems to be a very interesting and lively blog!



Picture by: Mr. McClung, of some of the students in his class. This is what I gathered from the blog post.
Picture

Blog


The next use of blogs I found is at Barber Middle School in Acworth, Geogia. It seems that this school has a blog set up for many of the faculty members. The blog in particular that I am going to look at is Mrs. Smith-Dale's. She teaches 8th grade Language Arts. Her blog is set up like many of the other faculty members. Basically, the blog includes the class assignments for each class day. There also appears to be directions for the work and also some notes included in a few of the blogs. I can see where this would be very useful in the schools. So many kids go to school and rarely right down their class or homework assignments, and this could be a very handy tool when they forget to do those things. All you have to do is to log on to your teacher's blog and there is everything you might have forgotten to write down. There are actually seperate links on the sides set-up for easy access to homework assignments and also test schedules. I really like this use of a blog!



This is a picture of the outside of Barber Middle School.

Blog & Picture


Hope you find this info interesting, and also hope you enjoy looking at these other blogs. Have a great night!

"Did you know?" Video. Wow!

Well, I just finished watching the "Did you know?" video and I have to say that everything on that video I would have never guessed would have been true. I think the thing that shocked me most though was the number of college graduates. I would never have thought the India and China's numbers would have been that much greater than in the U.S. Also, the number of searches on Google in one day, 27 billion! I would never have guessed. I mean I suppose I can see it, but it's just hard to believe that something is so universal and so used. All of the statistics on that video were just unimaginable to me.

After watching that video it is easy to see how just about everything in our world today is based on technology. The number of visits to MySpace, the number of instant messages, e-mails, and text messages, and the number of visits to YouTube have just sky-rocketed in the past few years. After looking at all of those statistics too, it's hard to imagine places and people that have never even used a computer in their life.

I really liked the video. It definitely makes you think! Oh, on the part where it says guess the country and it lists largest military, strongest education program, and those things I definitely was thinking the U.S.! Anyone else think that?

Well, that's all for this post. Hope you enjoyed!

Kimmie

ACCESS, What is it?

Alright, well today I'm going to write about ACCESS. ACCESS stands for Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and Students Statewide. It is another program, created by the Alabama Department of Education, which is a tool designed to make great advances in education.

ACCESS is designed to provide Alabama high school students with courses that may not be offered at their school, or just extra classes they would like to participate in. The program offers courses related to the Advanced Placement (AP) classes, electives, and various other courses. It is also supposed to offer access to the Advanced Diploma courses. ACCESS is completely web-based, so there is a large amount of technology that comes along with it. Many different advantages come with offering courses via ACCESS. Each course has its own teacher, most of which record their lessons and post them online for the students to have easy access. Also, taking courses on ACCESS allows students at one school to interact with students at another, which is just an early form of networking for these students.

I personally think ACCESS is a great idea. I have worked with a teacher who actually taught a few classes on ACCESS and I thought the technology involved was great. There are so many possibilities with the courses offered. Online courses are definitely not for everyone, but I personally enjoy them. An internet course will definitely teach you self-discipline because with these courses everything is your responsibility! I think schools offering ACCESS courses is great though. Some schools just can't offer every course, but with ACCESS its possible to offer a much larger variation of classes. If I was ever offered the oppotunity to teach on ACCESS I would definitely take the chance.

Well, that's is the main idea behind ACCESS. Hope you enjoyed reading! That's all for now. =]

Kimmie

About ALEX

So today I'm going to be talking about ALEX. Some of you may have no idea what I'm talking about, I know before this past week I would have had no idea what ALEX was. Hopefully by reading on you will have a better idea and understanding of what it actually is.

Something that I knew nothing of before this class is ALEX, which stands for Alabama Learning Exchange. ALEX provides a large amount of resources to teachers and just about anyone else that can be very, very useful! Created by the Alabama Department of Education it is designed to provide extra resources to teachers, parents, and students. Looking through the site you can find multiple things including the ALCOS, lesson plans, interactive links for students, and much much more.

Personally, I think the ALEX site is an excellent idea. I not only believe this because I want to be a teacher and think it will be great for me, but its also a great place for parents and students to go. It is so easy to find on the web, and the site is very well organized so its really simple to find whatever you may be looking for. Also, I love the lesson plans that are available to look at. To be able to go on and look at those and have an idea of what you want to do for your own class and just build off of it can be of so much help to a teacher. I also really like the course of study that is available. This is not only useful to the teacher, but can be also very useful to the parents. Parents are always curious as to what their child is learning in school, and with the addition of the course of study to ALEX it is so simple for them to just go onto the site and look over the lessons and know exactly what is happening in their child's classroom. This can be a great advantage to how the parent-teacher relationship works and make it much easier for communication between the two. I have already had to use the ALEX site for two of my other education classes, so I know I will definitely be using it when I have my own classroom one day!

A Little More About Me

Hi everyone. Well as you may have figured out, my name is Kimberly. Most people call me Kimmie, but either one is just fine with me. I have always lived here in Baldwin County, Loxley to be more specific. I graduated from Robertsdale High School a couple of years ago, and I'm now a sophomore at USA. My initial reason for going to South was because I was going to major in Radiography and South had a good program for that, but now I'm majoring in Elementary Education which I'm very excited about! I also wanted to go to South because it was close to home, and even though I've been living in Mobile I wanted to have the opportunity to be able to come home if I wanted to. I'm hoping that when I graduate from South I'll be able to get a teaching position somewhere here in Baldwin County, at least that's what I'm shooting for. We will see how that goes though. Well, that's about all I can think of that may be interesting in my life. Hope you all are having a great day!!

Hi Everyone! =]

Hello to everyone that happens to be reading my blog! =] Hope you enjoy!!