Reflection Week #8

This week we had some free time during class. We were able to make sure we felt comfortable with our grades on Engrade. This is a great tool to use in this classroom as well as in our future classrooms. It can be used to make sure parents are up to date on what is going on with their students. Having us check our Engrade was a great chance too and it would be wise to do that in our classrooms sometime before SEPs, when we meet with the parents, so they will know what to expect and there will be no nasty surprises when we meet face to face.

In my life this week I used technology in very fun ways. I went on a road trip with friends this weekend and within an hour from when we got home, our Facebook accounts were updated with pictures from four different cameras and we were able to blog about our trip and get information out to our friends and family all over before we even took time to give them a phone call to tell them we were home safe. These tools are so great to keep people up to date so fast on what is going on. Just thinking about this quick exchange of information I think of how great this would be for the parents of our students. I think sometimes we get too stuck in having to write out a whole newsletter or wait till we have something really important to say and by then, information is out of date. What if we took the fast pace of something as simple as the status change on Facebook and found a way of really having education keep pace with how parents and students receive information. If a status type tool was put on a class website or even if I created a special Facebook page for myself to which I only added parents and students then I could keep information going out so quickly with something like, "Miss Rappleye's class loved the assembly!" or, "Miss Rappleye is at a meeting this morning but will be back in class for the afternoon." What a great tool for the classroom and welcome to the 21st Century oh ye World of Education!

The video was similar to a video we'd watched before and was again an eye-opener. I did enjoy the video How Not to Use PowerPoint because it put into words (or rather a funny PowerPoint) the feelings I've had about technology. I know I get into the mindset of just wanting to use technology just to fulfill a requirement instead of really taking time to figure out how to use it well. Evaluating myself through the PDP made me more aware of where I stand and gave me direction for where to go.