It was an exciting day in my class today. A few of my students have published their Weebly book reports. We have been working on our Weeblies for a few weeks now and the students are so engaged in their work and they are so cooperative. They are showing each other how to do different things, such as including youtube clips, slide shows and various special effects for their weebly. I don't think I have seen such excitement from my students before. Several of my students have finished their book reports and are commenting on each other's sites.  I haven't figured out how to post their weeblies yet but here are some poems that my students have done.

  Natashas's poem


Simi's poem

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Veryna's collection of poems.

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

I am reading about blogging right now and things that can be done with blogging. Recently, from Twitter, I discovered a website called PicLits.com and created a poem. I learned that the poem can be embedded onto my blog. So I am going to attempt to embed the poem.....If you see one, then I guess I figured out how to do it. Wish me luck. Okay so I am super excited. My picture is embedded to my blog with a link to the poem on PicLits. (Someone even read my poem and posted a comment, which was really encouraging. It is amazing how positive feedback is so motivating. It made me want to create more poems. ) I am going to continue to read about blogging because that really was my goal tonight. My writing right now is all over the place. I just feel like I am learning so much, it is hard to organize my thoughts.

Poems created on PicLits from Ms Wood

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com
See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Open to Changes

This has been an intersting year. It has been a really good year for me to embark on a world of changes, as I have a class of students who are very adaptable and eager to try new things. Some of the things we tried were successful and some things we tried, we decided weren't for us, but we were grateful for the experience, as with everything, we learned from all our experiences.

One of the biggest changes I have been slowly working into my practice is integrating technology into my class. For many years I didn't believe in the importance of technology in education and was very resistent to it. Some of my resistence had to do with the technology we had available but most of my apprehension had to do with not knowing where to start or even how to find out what was available. I had heard about blogs and wikis and other technology jargon and didn't know what they were or how I could use them in my class. Earlier this year I signed up for a twitter account and was open to a whole new world of technology. I didn't even know what Twitter was when I signed up. Twitter has been some of the best professional development that I have ever had. The teachers I have connected with have been so helpful and offered suggestions of where to start. Since joining Twitter, I am reading and following blogs, opening links to various applications and making plans of how to include them in my class. For the first time in my career I am excited about the possiblilities of bringing technology into my room. I still don't have the language down and am only at the beginning of my technology exploration but I have started and I am looking forward see how far I can go and how far my students can go.