C4T #4

My C4T #4 assignment was on Mr. Steven Anderson. He has a blog called, Blogging About the Web 2.0 Connected Classroom.

Professional Development On Your Time, Your Way

Mr. Anderson's first blog post that I read was about Professional Development for teachers. A lot of times teachers may think that Professional Development is a waste of time or boring but there are many tools out there that can make it a better fit to their needs at their own pace. Learning new things and keeping up with the pace of the technology in today's world is vital to our students and classrooms. Mr. Anderson lists and links several helpful sites:

Simple K12 Webinar Series

Classroom 2.0 Live!

Bam Radio Network

School Leadership Summit Recordings

TED Talks

Twitter Hashtags

I will definitely be adding these to my PLN. Hopefully if anyone reads my blog other than Dr. Strange they will find these sites useful too. My response to his post was:

Hi Mr. Anderson! I am working on my Alternate Masters in Elementary Education and I am one of Dr. Strange's EDM310 students at the University of South Alabama. You can find my blog here. I found everything you said in your blog about Professional Development for useful to me. I am working on my PLN and I will definitely be adding the sites you provided to my PLN. Every little bit helps. Thanks for sharing the sites and I look forward to reading more of your posts.

I thanked him and left a link to my blog.

So You Wanna Use Blogs in the Classroom

The second blog by Mr. Anderson I read was called, So You Wanna Use Blogs in the Classroom. This post was actually really helpful for what we are doing in EDM310 right now. It basically talks about how to start a blog in your classroom or how you go about getting your students to set up their blogs for the classroom. The two most popular blog sites for students are Edublogs and Kidblogs. He also links several useful websites and tips pertaining to starting a classroom blog. I hope if any other students read my blogs and are sincerely interested in a classroom blog they check out these links.

My response to his post was:

Hi Mr. Anderson!

My name is Jamie Barbour and I am an Education Major at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. I am one of Dr. Strange's EDM310 students. I am pursuing an Alternative Masters in Elementary Education. You can view my blog here. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this blog post because all semester I have been learning about classroom blogs. I am a new comer to the blogging world and I hope to one day have a classroom that utilizes a classroom blog. I think having a blog and having students have a blog is really vital to today's classroom. Technology is all around us every where and I think students should use it in every way possible. I also think having a bigger audience for your writing only helps you become a better writer, which is something every student needs to be. Thanks for sharing what you know about classroom blogs. I will definitely be using this information in the future. I have shared some of your links on my blog as well so hopefully it can help others. I will also be adding these sites to my PLN. Thanks again for posting this information.

Sincerely, Jamie Barbour