Week 15 Blog Post - What did I leave out?

I have learned so much through taking this class! It has been an eye opener in many ways, and a positive affirmation in others. So, how could it be improved? Was there anything that was left out, in my elementary 1st grade teacher opinion?

I think that if you are currently an elementary school teacher, that it would be a good idea for these teacher/students of EDM 510 to have one or two less blogging following assignments, and instead they would use that time to create and manage their own classroom blog for their students. Their assignments could be to assign blogging work for their classroom kids, manage it, assist their students with creating similar work to what we are seeing the Pt. England students do, etc. Then the other EDM students could comment on these children's classroom blogs, and it would take the blogging to that next level.

It would force us to not wait until we are 100% comfortable with blogging to go ahead and venture there with our students. It would open up the home/school connection with parents and a bigger world audience (the other EDM students, you, etc.) commenting on and motivating our young students to create and write and blog. That would take time, so I would suggest limiting the other blogging assignments for these current teacher/EDM students, but I really think that this would be the way to implement what we are learning in class into the classroom for our kids.

Also, maybe have optional projects that we teachers could do in place of a different assigned project where we incorporate the technology that we are seeing through this class into the classroom and document that. So, instead of reading the articles and commenting or creating a project, etc. we could create a project for our class to do like we were already assigned, and then the next week we show how that went in the classroom and the results instead of a different task, etc.

I feel like I have done a good job taking what I am learning and applying it in the classroom and it's so great to see these happy results, but it would be nice to have that be an element of this course where we get to share and see how this is impacting the youth where we work.

Does that make sense?

Thanks,
MAP