Report on Project 6!

For my project 6 I contacted Mr. Joe McClung. He is a 6th grade teacher in Noel, Missouri at Noel Elementary School. During our blog posts about schools around the country I had found Mr. McClung's class blog and wrote about it in my post. He commented on my post so I decided to contact him and I asked him about technology he uses in his own classroom.

I was suprised to find out that Mr. McClung's class was already using Google Docs. When I was e-mailing with him he said they were using it to share documents with one another in class and then they were going to conduct a peer review on a short story with another class in Australia. I think that is so cool. Now I'm a sophomore in college and this semester has been the first time I've actually even heard of Google Docs. Yet, these sixth graders are using it and collaborating with a classroom across the globe! That would be such a neat class to be in in sixth grade!!

He also said he uses a program called Ning with his students. He said it is much like Facebook, but he can control everything that goes on with it. I like that it is something that the teacher can control. Even if the students are in sixth grade, there always needs to be some restrictions here and there. He said it does allow for chat and discussion boards though so that is another very cool tool.

Mr. McClung's class sounds very neat and interesting to me. I know that when I was in sixth grade we didn't use anywhere near the amount of technology that he's using with his students. What he's doing is very important, because as the generations progress the students are becoming more and more technology oriented and the teachers have to follow this trend to keep the students interested. I hope to do as well as he is with the technology realm. I'm sure his students really enjoy the class.

Check out his blog: Mr. McClung's Class Blog