Stress

The holiday season has arrived! I am feeling the stress of it all with the semester in TEAM winding down, shopping, curriculum...lots to do! Filling out the last online input and seeing all that is due in the upcoming weeks was scary.
As I was shopping this weekend online, I finally used googlecheckout I have been hearing about. It was pretty exciting in that it saved me $10, I have to play around with it some more to see if it will be as useful for future purchases.
I am excited to start dabbling with some website-creating in class this week. I remember doing some programing in college and feeling very confused and overwhelmed with it. But like most things we learn, I think it will make much more sense this time around!

Online class

I'm not sure how I felt about the online class. I definately feel like it was less productive, but that could just be b/c it was the first time and there were technical issues. Unproductive seems to be the theme of this weekend though! 3 days and I feel like I had less time to get done all of that end of the quarter stuff. I think all of this technology is great and fun to incorporate into the classroom, but at this point it definately is time consuming making smartboard lessons, updating class websites and grades...On a positive note, I saw Bon Jovi Saturday!

GLEF?!?

GLEF= George Lucas Educational Foundation Got it! I read about alternative assessments and commented on this quick topic. It was good to see that we are all sick of state assessments and all of the other tests our kids are taking! Hopefully we can find other ways to assess student knowledge for the state and country, but I have a feeling the rise in student testing for the purpose of data collection and comparison. But atleast we can find other ways in the classroom to avoid these pencil and paper tasks!

I hope to learn new ways to be more effective with different technologies. Right now I feel that I am using technology all of the time (to communicate with others, to create and search for lesson plans, teaching during class, to research, etc). I enjoy it greatly and find that it makes most tasks more professional, efficient, and fun. It would be nice to learn about technologies that I am not familiar with to enhance what I am doing both at school and at home. I thought I knew a great deal about technology and although this might be true, during the first day of class I already heard a lot of new terms that I am not familiar with (wikis, delicious, podcasting, dreamweaver, etc) and I am excited to learn how to use them. Since technology is constantly changing I think it is great to be on the forefront of what is new and I think that is what TEAM will do for me. It will give me knowledge and skills for more technology tools to use regularly. I love teaching and I can’t wait to use my new learned skills to excite my students and get them actively involved in lessons and projects for my curriculum.