It is funny that I just received a letter from a school in New Jersey asking questions about our school, community and our state. The kids really thought is was neat as we were working on the answers to the questionnaire. We get so wrapped up in the TEKS/TAKS that we lose sight of opportunities like this. This did not use technology but it could easily be changed to correspond with someone by email. I really like the example of the students in a spanish class actually talking someone in that was a native speaker. It was a good educational experience to learn that these students were not what they expected. Parent contacts are stressed at my school. The family connections discussed would be great. In our rural school district we have a lot of families that do not have internet access. We do have teacher web pages as part of our school web site. It is not utilized very much. We do post our weekly newsletters on it. Empowering teachers really hit home about teaching left-brained methods to right-brained children. This definitely is a cry for a change in teaching methods and you can really see that it is hard to keep kids motivated in a traditional classroom.

We explored word and publisher in class last week. Track change was something new that I have never seen before. This capability would be very helpful in working with students and their writing. I am familiar with inserting pictures and the text features but when you do not use it very often you forget these things. Publisher is something I would like to use more with my students. I think making cards has been my onlu experience with the program. I am looking forward to the next class and exploring it more. TAKS is fast approaching and I hope when it is over that I can really try out what I am learning in class with my students. The next class is also suppose to include web design which should be very interesting. This will be a totally new area for me.

I have really enjoyed the last 2 classes. I feel the look up features we discussed will be very helpful in future searches. I now have the tools needed to assure that a web site is creditable. I have to admit that I have been guilty of accepting what I read on the first web site that came up. This would be a good lesson to teach older students. I am in elementary and most research done is teacher led and not done independently.
I have gone to several classmates blogs to see if they had added anything so having bloglines will be a great asset to have and a big time saver. The del.icio.us site will also be great to have access to your favorites at home and at work. I am not sure how to make full use these resources yet. I have continued to share what I learn with my co-workers and they are getting something out of the class as well.

I had fun warning a couple of people of the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. I made sure and told our Science teacher since I thought it might be useful for her. I tried to access the martinlutherking.org website and it was blocked at school. I did send out a warning to my campus about the site especially since it is black history month.