Microblogging on the Twitter World!

I have recently been exploring different social networking sites for teachers. I have learned that there are many ways to use microblogs for teaching and learning purposes.  From the best colleges online blog, I learned 28 creative ways that Twitter can be used for teachers. Some of the most fascinating ideas that I read were to share stories, make announcements, communicate with parents, vocab word of the day, review, or even a scavenger hunt.  Twitter can also be used to share links/information just like The Anatomy of a Tweet describes about some great resources and websites for teachers! In a simple tweet, we can get a big message such as a website or place to go for materials. Who doesn’t love FREE websites for teachers! I have found great power points, worksheets, and more that have definitely saved me some time while planning!!

Teacher Resources!!!

I have recently discovered a social media network for teachers that seems to be extremely useful and informative! It is called Teacher 2.0. It is a network of support for all educators no matter what age group you work with. I have read just a few of the posts including ideas about preventing plagiarism, incorporating technology into the classroom, and how to use Bloom’s Taxonomy.  You have to sign up for an account, but it is free to use!  If you have any questions, here is a link to their site J Enjoy!

Teachers of today

A teacher is like a dream. A dream of something we have designed in our heads and hope that when we wake up it is reality. A dream that we have created something new that is the coolest thing in our life that we can’t wait to talk about and show all of our friends. A teacher is a wide source of knowledge that can help any person reach their goals in life and become a star. A teacher is constantly changing and coming up with new ideas and inspirations that we think about and learn from.

A teacher is like a dream in so many ways. Teachers must continue to learn and teach in everyday life in order to keep up with the world today. I have recently read an article on connectivism, or the integration of new principles and theories into our lives.  This article said, “Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.” I don’t think that this could be better put another way. Technology is constantly changing and revolving around our lives. It is a teacher who trys to learn this technology and incorporate it into the classroom so that students can benefit most from it. We use technology more than we realize in life and this technology not only influences our thinking process, but it influences how we live our life and things that we do. Social Media has changed learning. “The knowledge in the technology field changed extremely quickly.” We connect to different networks as social media sites to find out what is happening around the world, we form opinions about it, and then represent these opinions in many different ways such as speech, dress, style, where we go, who we support, and everything else we take into consideration in everyday life.

Guessing in Foreign Language Class

I have recently read an article from a fellow blogger about promoting guessing in language learning. It talks about how to help students choose when and how to make better guesses. I really enjoyed reading this article because it not only talked about the statistics about how different guessing strategies can help our foreign language students, but it also talked about how to help your students choose good guesses. On top of the article was a picture of the game “Guess Who?” This was always one of my favorite games as a child and it hooked me right away! I thought back to how the game was played and have decided that this could be a great learning tool inside my Spanish classroom. In Spanish, there are two verbs that mean “to be” in very different circumstances. One of the verbs , SER, deals with characteristics of people. By using this game inside the classroom, the students could learn how to give and ask about different characteristics in a hands on, interactive learning activity. I’m not going to go out and buy 15 Guess Who games because board games are a racket these days, but what about creating your own boards? All you need is a set of pictures of people with different characteristics that you could probably find in clip art, laminate them so they last forever, put them together, and then start playing!