My Web Portfolio

When I googled my name, a link came up to the MSU College of Education’s website. This past spring I had won a scholarship and my name and picture were listed on their website of award recipients. From this, someone could learn that I had won the scholarship and potentially what the requirements for the scholarship were, but they wouldn’t find out anything else about me. Furthermore, this was the only thing that came up when my name was googled. Therefore, potential employers would not find much about me—good or bad.

With the portfolio I have now created, I hope to use this as a resource to send potential employers to in order to give them a better idea about who I am. It also shows them that I have learned a great deal about technology during my time at MSU and so I will be able to use that knowledge and integrate it into the classroom. The portfolio can also be used for parents to look at, or even students. Therefore, I structured the portfolio in a very simple manner, with links back to the other pages on each page so that it is easy to navigate through. Everything is clearly labeled and easy to read. I also provided pictures to make it a bit more interesting, because I know a bunch of text usually isn’t what most people want to look through on a website. Showing pictures of myself makes me relatable and puts a face to a name. Furthermore, I provide contact information on the homepage so that anyone with comments or questions can send me an e-mail.

Using RSS Feeds

I decided to do the third gallery project, “professional development”. The specific area I chose was technology professional development since I think this is an area of education that will definitely be changing as I progress through my years as a teacher. I found 3 really great websites that had RSS feeds that will allow me to see new updates or ideas for integrating technology into the classroom, which I made public and added as a widget on my blog. For example, one of the blogs gives great ideas on different internet technologies you can use with students, another gives information about different programs that are coming out that can be used in the classroom, and the last resource I found was a forum of teachers with general questions about technology that they could bounce of others.

RSS feeds seem as if they can be used in a number of ways. The most obvious use for me seems to be for keeping track of a potential classroom blog or if students make their own individual blogs, I can then subscribe to those. It will also be helpful for me to continue learning about technology, as can be seen above by the different blogs and websites I subscribed to. RSS feeds could also be used by students—if I wanted them each to stay on top of individual topics to report back to the classroom, I could teach them how to use RSS feeds to get their information rather than spending hours searching all over the internet each time. I could even encourage parents to subscribe to our classroom blog, that way e-mail notifications could be sent directly to them and they would not have to actually go to our blog to see what we were doing—they would automatically be notified, rather than trying to remember to look each week.

Blog Assignment

The first blog I found that I thought was interesting was Ms. Murphy’s Second and Third Grade Classroom blog. On the blog, Ms. Murphy posts homework assignments, upcoming events, and other important things that are relevant to her class. I found it especially interesting that she had put up pictures of the students. I felt like that would be a great way to involve the students because most children love seeing themselves working in the classroom. She also used it as a way to boast about students who had done outstanding work or won certain awards or competitions. Furthermore, it allowed parents to see what the homework assignments were for that day or even to hear about their child’s accomplishments.

The second blog I found that I really enjoyed was Mr. Kranzo’s Earth Science Classroom blog. Similar to Ms. Murphy, Mr. Kranzo posted the homework assignments on his homepage in order to allow students and parents to look at homework assignments. In his “About” page he tells about how he’ll also post extra credit assignments online for the students to do in their spare time. I thought the best aspect of his blog though was the “Links” page. On this page he has links to multiple resources that his students can utilize in their learning of Earth Science. This could be especially helpful for students if they had to do research for a project or he could also use it as a way to assign homework (he provided a link to an Interactive Rock Cycle that could be a great teaching tool).

After reviewing several blogs that were used in the classroom I have come up with numerous ways of utilizing a blog at the elementary level:
1) Keeping track of homework assignments (especially for students who are sick or absent for any reason)
2) Informing parents of students’ good work or behavior
3) Sharing pictures of what the class has been doing (As a scrap-booker, I know that these photos might be useful for parents to keep)
4) Using it as a tool to publish students’ writing and/or drawings
5) In the older elementary grades it could possibly be used as a place to have a discussion about topics that the class finds important or interesting
6) I’m not sure if this is possible yet, but potentially in the future making grades available to parents to view at any time in order to keep track of how their child is doing in school
7) Making links available to students that have interactive learning opportunities, or making links available to parents and colleagues for any tips on teaching or parenting that I find might be helpful for them