#6 - School Website, Using Technology Professionally, and the Tech Sandbox

When I go to the homepage of Chaires Elementary School's website, I see a large picture of many teachers wearing matching shirts. I instantly get a sense of unity within the school. The website itself has a simple layout and is easy to navigate.

 Then I found Mrs. Widner and chose to look at her class's website. Mrs. Widner teaches second grade. On this page, she lists a lot about herself and her education/work history. After reading this, I felt a connection to her and I think that a parent reading this page would also feel that same connection.


 By clicking around, I could see a few helpful links like her homework policy, a memo to parents about her snack policy, and a behavior policy. She lists the class schedule so families will always know what their child is doing in school. However, the exact assignments and weekly lesson plans were password-protected and I could not access them.



Finally, the part I thought was the most resourceful of Mrs. Widner's website was how she embedded a shared calendar into her website so that parents can sign up for a parent-teacher conference time. This is a much easier method than trying to have parents sign up for a time slot at orientation or open house when there are so many other parents crowding around the teacher.


The podcast says that professional development is when people in a profession (including teaching) further their knowledge. This includes attending seminars, workshops, and sharing ideas and plans with other teachers. After reading chapter 7 of the textbook, I definitely have more ideas to use technology to accomplish things for teaching efficiently. I personally love the mail merge feature in Microsoft Word. I never knew it existed until we did it in class a few weeks ago, and I know it will be extremely useful in a few years when I need to create newsletters and things that need to be mailed home. Mail merge is a huge time-saver.

I loved our trip to the COE Tech Sandbox. Everything in there was so innovative and cool! My favorite thing in the room was the virtual reality headset. From the moment I put it on, I felt like I was in another world. Not only was I in a 360-degree view of this world, but I could hear the noises and walk around in the world. It was extremely hands-on and I felt like I was actually there. But, not only is it a fun toy, but it can be used in a classroom! For example, if I was teaching a class about French culture, the best way to teach this would be to take a field trip to France. But, that is very unlikely to happen. So, the next best thing is this virtual reality world. As the teacher, I could find France as a virtual-reality world and during class, everyone could take a turn "walking the streets of Paris" (minus the jet lag and knowledge of the French language!)