Digging for Dinosaurs

Yesterday at school during recess the kids found a large mound of dirt that was from the construction of their new playground. One of the first graders (the grade that I would prefer to teach) had checked out a book about dinosaurs earlier that day and decided to look for dinosaur fossils. They found some dinosaur footprints (dog footprints) and were SO excited about it. They continued excavating for the rest of recess, not once choosing to play on the playground.
This experience taught me that children have fun while learning on their own. Instead of playing on the playground, the students on their own got out their book and dug for fossils with no instruction for me. Their imagination led them to inquire about the dirt and fossils and they had a great time doing it. This experience shows how teaching by inquiry is a great way to teach elementary students because their imagination offers so much. While inquiring, students can have fun and come up with more findings than may have come from a typical lesson plan. They do not get bored or finish early because the possibilities are endless.

Teacher Journal

From now on my blog is going to be a teacher journal. I am going to record specific instances that occur in my job as an after school facilitator at Cherry Tree Elementary.

Emerging Technology 3: Facebook

Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook with fellow computer science major students and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while he was a student at Harvard University.The website's name stems from the colloquial name of a book given to incoming students at Zuckerberg's high school, Phillips Exeter Academy. The book shows the faces and names of the school's students and faculty. Facebook currently has more than 250 million active users worldwide.
Facebook is very user friendly but I found this helpful tutorial on it in case you have never used it before.



Facebook allows its users to upload pictures of its users and albums of pictures. This is the main reason I like to get on Facebook, to look at all of the pictures that people upload. Here is another very helpful video that shows you step by step how to upload pictures and albums to Facebook.



I think that Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with current and old friends and it is also a great way to meet new friends. Social networking is very popular now and Facebook, in my opinion, is one of the top social networking sites.
Facebook is a safe site because you can manage your profile so that only people you add as friends can view your profile. You can also edit your settings so that if you don't want certain people to be able to find you on Facebook you can block them.
I use Facebook to keep in touch with my friends. It is really fun to be able to search an old aquaitance's name and find them on Facebook.
If you haven't already, check out Facebook and create your own profile!

Emerging Technology 2: Moodle

Moodle is like a virtual classroom. A Moodle homepage acts just like a website does. Teachers can post links to the class calendar, links to assignments that need to be completed, an online syllabus, and discussion forums. This gives students the ability to find information they may have missed because they were absent from class. Teachers can also create and give tests, monitor students’ activity, edit content and organize grades. The teacher has total control of the learning environment. Here is a video that explains Moodle a little more in depth.



After going to the Moodle website, I found some more video tutorials that helped me understand Moodle better. Since I am not a teacher yet, or in a class that uses Moodle, it is hard for me to use the software. I am very interested in it, however, and wish to learn as much as I can so that I can incoproate it into my classroom in the future.

Here is a video that shows you how to create a lesson in Moodle. This will come in handy when we are all teaching!



I think that Moodle is a great technology for students and teachers. It is a productive online activity for students and it makes students more aware of what they need to be doing in their classes. It also gives parents the opportunity to see what their children are learning in school and also get a report of how they are doing in school through their gradebook. Moodle is very similar to our class we take through Oncourse, which is a very helpful resource. I think that everyone should check out the video tutorials and website and think about using Moodle in your future classrooms :)

Delicious link

Here is a link to my delicious site. While it was a bit time consuming, I know that I will appreciate having all of my bookmarked items in one spot. I looked at other students' delicious links as well and found some great resources. I have bookmarked lots of interesting sites and articles about teaching, feel free to explore!

My second podcast!

Random fact of the day #2