Random Ramblings

Hello out there in Education Cyberworld!

This is my attempt at blogging and making a webpage on edublogs. I’m thinking of this as my early New Year’s resolution. I hope to continue blogging on a consistent basis. Since I have been reading several blogs and websites dealing with the “new” web 2.0, I thought I had better jump on the bandwagon and start blogging. I have tried other blog sites, but I like edublogs since I can access it from school and it’s easy to manipulate.

I subscribe to several blogs and use Goggle as my RSS feeder. I will share some of those as we progress throughout the year. RSS is like a gatherer of blogs. I find the ones I enjoy reading and Goggle complies and updates them for me daily. Sometimes, there are a few and other times there can be more than 100 posts. Good thing I enjoy reading! I have made a personalized page on Goggle so that I can see my RSS feeds each time I visit my homepage. This is a great tool that is user friendly for even non-techy people like me.

I have learned a great deal in the past few weeks that I have been in my new position as technology facilitator. There is still a lot for me to learn, but I am excited at the prospects of new technology in the classroom. Teaching has changed by leaps and bounds since I was in school and within the past 14 years I have been teaching. Gone are the days that teachers lectured for the entire class period – thank goodness! Students are coming to the teachers longing for inventive and exciting lessons. We, as teachers, must change our thinking and way of teaching in order to keep up with the technology revolution that is occurring. Education is no place to remain stagnate. I think good teachers know this and adapt their teaching styles.

Congratulations to Bragg Street Academy for making both AYP and ABC’s! What an accomplishment! They were the only school in Lee County to make all their goals. The entire county is very proud of you. Way to go!

The 8th grade computer test began today. I am sure that the students will do their best as they were very well prepared. The teachers have been great in helping me prepare the students. I have been invited into several 8th grade classrooms to review for the test. The students have been very willing to listen and learn. The teachers have been reviewing and practicing the test daily and with the aid of the exploratory teachers have thoroughly prepared the students. We have used the NCDesk online practice test, practice sites on Catawba County, and Gaston County.

I have included several blogs for your reading enjoyment. One in particular I encourage you to read is Kim Collazo’s blog www.swimming-in-the-river.blogspot.com. She is the Instructional Technology Facilitator for Deep River Elementary School. Kim has been more attentive in updating her blog than I, but with her guidance, I’m going to catch up!

I also encourage you to look at my bookmarks website at . This site has over 300 bookmarks that I have collected. I’m hopeful you can find what you are looking for and if not, please email me and I’ll add them. Creating your own del.icio.us site is easy and you can access your bookmarks from any computer that has Internet. This is convenient if you have been like me and bookmarked something at home and needed it at work. Ugh! Now, with del.icio.us I can reach my bookmarks from anywhere.

I invite you to look over my biography and hometown pictures page. I also have a page of my Middle School T.I.M.E.S. newsletters. Please post comments to my blogs so that I can improve my communication techniques. I am here to help my teachers and my students. If we are to succeed in this technologically advancing world, we have to help each other. I hope you enjoy reading my new blog.
Have a great week!

Until next time ~ Danita

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 8:06 pm Filed under Blog and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.