Blog Post #6

I decided to visit the website of my high school alma mater, Leon High School. What I did not expect is how much the school website has improved in just the two short years since I last visited it. The school page is divided into seven main sections. The first is the homepage. This is where you can find information about registration, weather, and upcoming events. It also links back to the Leon County Schools page for the district. The next tab is "About Us." Here you can find contact information, a mission statement, the school's history, and information about alumni and funding for the school. The next tab is for parents and students. This provides a comprehensive list of everything a parent or student may need to find: bell and bus schedules, forms and links, senior class information, and school policies. The next two sections, "Activities" and "Departments," outline the different programs that Leon has to offer. This includes clubs, student government, advanced placement classes, JROTC, and other school-wide programs. The "Faculty and Staff" tab provides access to the Teacher Portal, which is restricted by log-in, as well as information about employment. The final tab includes teacher websites. These teacher websites are available without log-in, and provide specified classroom information for each subject and teacher. The only student links limited by log-in are ListServ, ClassLink, and Parent Portal, which all provide classified information about an individual student or class. Find the website here: Leon High School

There are a lot of responsibilities I will have as the leader of my classroom and students. Since I want to teach kindergarten, a lot of these responsibilities include communicating with adults both inside and outside of the school. Within the school, I could use basic things like email or making some sort of online newsletter to inform the staff about the happenings of my classroom. For adults outside of the school, such as parents and prospective parents, I could publish a blog or have an Edmodo set up to interact with parents and let them know about upcoming events in the classroom. I think these tools will be extremely beneficial to me as I start teaching.

I absolutely loved going to the Tech Sandbox last week. It is so interesting to learn about all the different ways I can integrate technology into my classroom. I was sort of under the impression that a lot of these tools may not work for a kindergarten classroom, but one that I think will pair well with younger students is the Osmo. Osmo is a tool that uses a tablet and a specific software to play easy games with young children. A reflector tool makes it so that the space in front of the tablet is compatible with the screen, so lining up letters and numbers in front of the tablet will make them appear on the screen. I have used this with the children I babysit, so I was familiar with this tool. It is incredibly helpful to use with spelling or adding/subtracting games, and will be very beneficial to a classroom of young learners.