Wikis and Personality Types

I think wikis can and are useful for the classroom. I am not sure that I am sold on using them yet for my own classroom but as I become more familiar with creating my own that may change. Wiki's have been beneficial for my own use in preparing for certain classes that I have taken. I like that there is a community in which people can submit educated responses.

There are benefits to conversing in learning communities but traditional instruction is most likely more beneficial than those communities. In learning communities such as in wiki's not everyone has to work. Only a select one or two will end up doing the majority of the work and the others get to take the ride. In traditional settings, each person is responsible for their own performance. This probably has a lot to do with specific personality types too.

Students definitely have different learning styles due to different personality types. Some students are extroverted while others are introverted. Some students don't have a problem speaking in front of others while some will hyperventilate if placed in front of an audience. I believe that knowing a students' personality type can and will be very beneficial to a teacher. It will help me know how to approach students with different matters and it will help me know how to teach my lessons--such as lecture or visually stimulating lessons.

Spreadsheets

I really liked learning how to create a spreadsheet. Just yesterday- at work- I was asked to create a form that would track the progress of our clients. Learning on Monday how to create a spreadsheet helped me with this task. I will definately use spreadsheets in my English classrooms. They are better and more resourceful than a calculator because there is no time or effort in keeping up with grades once the spreadsheet is created and looking through the other sights that were suggested I saw great ways to issue spelling assignments and grammar assignments. Some of the primary functions of spreadsheets are easy tracking of information, getting the summation of numbers, oraganizing information, charting graphs of information, etc. there are so many functions of spreadsheets that can be useful to any classroom if utilized.

Inspiration

I found Inspiration incredible. I plan on teaching secondary English and I believe that Inspiration could be an extremely useful program to help organize thoughts and data. The features that Inspiration has-even being able to save video clips within the program impressed me. I could use this in my English classrooms when I assign papers for the class to write-encouraging students to properly organize thoughts, facts and theories over the topic.

Research papers would be an opportunity to make great use of technology in the classroom. Because writing is an activity that benefits from multiple revisions and high-quality feedback- technology is a way to cut some time out of the old-school write and turn it in and pass it back out, etc. With new technology- work can be sent via the internet or through these awesome programs such as Inspiration for teacher review and peer review. Peer feedback can be maintained through such sources as blogs-like what we are currently doing in class, but also through myspace pages, e-mail; there are many options to utilize when discussing technology.

Blogs...

I believe that blogs truely can be a fun and innovative form of communication among several different communities of people in one common place. I enjoyed what the Avery Middle School pronciple had to say about blogs and their usefulness in the classroom. Blogs created a means of communication in his school that gave parents the opportunity to become an active part of their child's education by possibly viewing the curriculum on the web page or seeing the lesson plans for that particular day. Blogs helped unite the teachers within the school by mapping out what was being taught in the classroom. Students could access the blog to stay on track with the demands of any particular class with a blog. Blogs are clearly a usefull tool in the classroom and definatley not a waste of time. If anything- a blog could save a great deal of extra time for everyone who takes advantage of this tool. The curriculum of the classroom can be greatly enhanced by the new technology at our fingertips. By using blogs and other resources students can review materials, have visuals and audio enhancements, can do activites for class, etc. The possibilities seem endless.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Shelley Witherspoon but I have to legally go by Shelley Johnson for the time being. I am majoring in English for the purpose of teaching secondary aged students. I will graduate at the end of this school term and I am excited about that. I have one little boy that is 2 years old and he is the greatest blessing I have ever experienced.