Thing 3: Photo Fun!

I take a lot of pictures of my students and I regularly share them on social media.  My school is big into twitter right now, and that's a little out of my comfort level, but I've been trying (I'm more of a FB person, and I have an Instagram account, but I only stalk people there, I don't post anything).  I take pictures, tweet them out, and tag our school; I'm trying to bring awareness of my school community (refugees and immigrants) and show the world the kinds of cool things my school is doing.

I downloaded the app Snapseed and I tried that out.  I watch the Youtube tutorial and I played around with 2 of my pictures (changing the contrast, the brightness and saturation); I thought that was cool.  While watching the tutorial my husband walked by and was like "I use snapseed for all my pictures, want me to help you?"  No, don't help me, I can figure it out myself.  The guy on the tutorial said all the pictures you take should be tweaked a little bit, to give them life.  I was amazed at how much more life like the woman seemed after he used those editing tools.

I thought #bookface was funny, but I'd never do that.  Reading through all the topics and suggestions, I really thought I might set up a public Instagram account for my classroom.  I don't like it when students try to friend me on Facebook, but Instagram would be alright, and then the students could show their parents what we're doing in class.  So I think that will be my next project.

My photo risk today was trying out Snapseed, and then I also went to Big Huge Labs and I made an Andy Warhol pop art masterpiece that I will try to upload here to this blog (I'm kind of clever, so I feel like that's doable for me #techchallenged).  I actually loved how the pop art turned out, I can see myself doing this for my class all the time.  I have a class set of ipads, so I think I'm going to request snapseed as an app on my ipads and let my students take and edit pictures.

Thing 02: Student Blogging & Writing

Student blogging seems cool.  Like, wow.

I currently teach 2nd grade, so I'm struggling with how this might fit into my day, but I love the idea.  My students have so much to say, and they are ELL's, so I feel like this would be such a "real" avenue for writing for them.  I'm actually excited.

I read all of the "read these first" articles, and I found them interesting/helpful.  They made sense to me.  One of my take aways was to use Weebly, so I immediately went to that site and set up accounts for my students and created a home page (talk about putting the cart before the horse!). 

Another take away I had was start by writing a topic on chart paper and have the students respond with sticky notes, I love that (cool right?).  I actually love that so much that we might do that for a while.  My struggle is, with my students being second graders and ELL's, I really have to work in very small groups to help with spelling.  But then I figured that most second grade teachers would have that problem.

Then I read another article (I've been working, reading and thinking for a few days).  Another article was a 5th grade teacher's step by step journey into blogging.  This teacher has her (his?) students create their blog in a google doc that gets worked on throughout the week, the teacher and student work together and edit it, then the teacher publishes it on Friday.  That was mind blowing to me.  In my head, I thought my students were on a device and just randomly blogging, but I liked the control this offered, and the editing potential.  All I can think about is how "language rich" this sounds.

Blogging is great because it's that missing piece I've been looking for, the voice and the publishing that the students need and crave; making for purposeful writing for an audience.  This 5th grade teacher also tweeted out her students blogs and shared them; people retweeted them and commented, then she would share with her students.  I found that very interesting (I know I like it when people comment and communicate with me). 

So now my journey begins...I'm excited...(we'll see how far I get).

Thing 1: Getting Started!

I'm Jennifer.  I teach 2nd grade at the Rochester International Academy.  My school is for immigrants and refugees; I love this job more than any other job I've ever had.  I used to teach in the catholic diocese and my students had everything and the parents were a little overbearing. 

Besides teaching, I'm a mom to 2 girls, my husband recently switched jobs/careers and now works at RIT.  I have a dog that drives me nuts. 

I wasn't sure about Cool Tools, but my librarian recommended it to our teachers.  This year I've been on a technological journey, so I decided I should give this a try.

I've never blogged before, but I've often thought about it, for my personal life and my professional life.  I'm excited about this blog and I'm excited to try out new some new "cool tools".

Somewhere the course description said something like, don't just use technology for the sake of technology, it needs to be meaningful.  But I wanted to say that I need to use it for the sake of technology so that I can then use it meaningfully.  That's just my process, I need to throw myself into it, become familiar with it, and then it can be meaningful.