Journal #7: Professional Learning Network

The professional learning network concept was a good experience. I kept forgetting to use the RSS feed because it's my first time having it, so I can't comment much on that! I think RSS feeds are helpful, but I save most of the websites I enjoy to my "favorites" anyway. I check them a few times a week, so it is essentially the same thing. As far as Twitter, I learned many neat ways to utilize it in the classroom: like having students tweet as historical figures, or researching vie specific twitter hash tags. However, I think Twitter would have been much more useful had everyone in the class been required to follow each other. Twitter only works as a collaborative platform if you have several followers and follow several accounts as well. I wrote more about that here. 

This blog that we are keeping is a nice little way to bounce ideas off of each other. I truly think this could be used in any classroom with students old enough to manage their own blog. If every student add each other's blog to their blog roll, you might see a lot of communication and sharing of ideas. I would prefer that all of the blogs are private and only visible by each other though..I know blogger has a setting for that. A blog like this might foster greater student involvement and engagement.

source: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreTeachers

The affinity group I joined via Facebook, We Are Teachers, was a really great experience. We Are Teachers is always growing. When I first joined, it had just under 150k members and now has over 155k. These members are in various stages of the teaching spectrum: from  instructional aides to substitute teachers,  pre-service teachers to veterans and everyone in between. Members work in all subjects including special ed, art and music, as well as all grade levels k-12. So this group is quite holistic. I have already talked about how the group is very interactive. Group moderators post regularly (often multiple times a day) and will post things like relevant articles, links to resources, and education/teacher-based humor in the form of comics/memes. There have been several times where they ask members to weigh in on various issues affecting education in the comments and this often creates very enriching dialogue. I have loved being able to see what other educators feel abotu certain issues. A few such topics come to mind: removing recess as a punishment, how to deal with students who blurt out, and how to avoid "burnout" as a teacher. One of my favorite things that We Are Teachers does is called the "teacher helpline." Weekly, they post a question/issue/problem form a group member and allow the rest of the members to comment their advice. It is really helpful as it is clear these issues are some that many people run into as educators, and that I may run into sometime in my career. We Are Teachers has also given me numerous ideas for activities and art projects to do with students. It is a really great resource! We Are Teachers can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreTeachers

Jounral #6: GED 512 Midway Reflection

source: http://freakyworld.net/wordpress-404-not-found-error/

I have learned a LOT in this course so far. I was a complete newbie to the world of web design. While I feel that I could make a basic website with a few links and pages, I can not do it completely from scratch. Using some of the coding we have done as a class however, I could render my own basic site design. And although I still don't feel 100% confident with creating a website completely from scratch, I now know so much more about web coding. I can look at basic code and decipher it. I have even found websites I like, and on my own, looked at theri code via the "view page source" when you right click. 

So far, the hardest assignment in this class has been figuring out how to get everything seamlessly uploaded into the cal poly server. I am slowly beginning to understand it more and more, but this is the portion that has given me the most headaches and has caused me the most grief. After a lot of time and energy, I was finally able to link this blog, my book exercises, and my lab work to my site and host it on the server.

The most rewarding assignment in this class however has been building my first website. While we did it as a class, it is extremely exciting to type in a url and have it go to a website I built from the ground up. It;s even more exciting to share this link with friends and say "Look! I made this site!"

Journal #5: Twitter!

source: http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2012/twitter-logo-redesigned/

As for my own Twitter account: I now have 2. I have my own personal one, and the academic one that I created for this class. I have realized that Twitter only works when you have a number of followers and follow a number of people yourself. If it is just one and not the other (or neither,( Twitter is pretty useless. No one really follows my academic account, so it is pretty boring and there is no interactivity. I think this project would have worked much better if the whole GED 512 class was told to all follow each other in order to engage, interact and collaborate with each other.

I actually really loved the link provided about 53 ways to use Twitter in the classroom. My favorite idea was doing character studies with your students. This includes giving each student a character from a book and have them start an account under that persona, tweeting as if they were this person. This forces them to do a serious character analysis in order to tweet realistically. I also love the very similar idea of having students tweet as if they were a historical figure. For instance, tweeting as if they were Columbus or Lincoln and even having them interact with each other as these historical figures via tweets. That sound very fun and I bet it would truly engage the students in meaningful learning.

Journal #4: Plan for Curriculum Project

Write and post to your blog a plan for your final project. Your plan should include your idea for the website, an image of the site map and wireframe, and description that covers the following points.

Plan for your Curriculum Project: Due Session five

• Working Title: "Madera County Library: Children's Programs"
• Developer - Vanessa Johnson
• Rational or focus - My mom works at the county library in my hometown as the children's programming coordinator. I plan to create a little website that showcases what this program has to offer. 
• Main features outline - I want this website to include examples of past events and activities as well as plans for future ones. There will be contact information as well. 
• Content - There will only be 4 individual web pages: The home page and then an "About," "Participate," and "Contact" page. Through reading, and personal internet use, I've learned that deeply embedded pages get much less user traffic. Subtopics on the About page will include "Meet your Children's Programs Coordinator," "What are Children's Programs?" and an FAQ section. Subtopics on the Participate page will include: "Holiday Events," "Junior Volunteers," "Storytime," and "Summer Reading Program." Each of these Participate subtopics will include a summary of what they are along with some form of media that illustrates past events. The Contact page will include the address, phone and email.
• Target audience - The website will be geared towards parents of kids aged 2-17, and persuading them to bring their children in to participate and get involved with program activities and events. 
• Design considerations. I want the site to be very simple and user-friendly, while remaining aesthetically pleasing. I don't want a million links, but I would like to include images and a video or two.
• Limiting factors - I'm still very much a novice in web-design so adding images and keeping everything organized behind-the-scenes is an issue. I also fear I may have difficulty creating something that looks good on Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc. AND Windows and Mac. 

Site Map:

Wire Frame:

(home page)