Reggie's EdTec 700 Blog Post

At the beginning of the year we have a “Back to School Night”. I plan on introducing the web site to my parents at that time. I am going to show the teachers and my staff/prinicipals when I get back to school. Since the students won’t really be utilizing this website (they have agendas that I am teaching them to use) I don’t have to worry about student privacy.  Before I show the parents this blog I am going to set up the permissions part of it to include parents, teachers, and staff, with me being the only owner of the site for protection. I know my prinicipal will be thrilled that I took the iniative to develop a useful tool for communication for our grade level and the parents that it serves. She will be pushing me to show the 5th grade parents.

I am happy with how well it turned out, so far. I think this was a learning process for me. I had never really set up a blog before so a lot of time was spent just learning edublogs, instead of knowing the program and being able to create what I had in my mind. I am putting a post on my blog called “Where to go next”. That post is going to be what I would still like to develop on my blog. If I were to say one thing that I learned I would say that I learned there is a wealth of information that I/we could be putting out to the parents without wasting paper. When I am done, this blog will have everything a parent could want to know about our grade level and its activities. I look forward to teaching my students how to blog this coming school year.

I will know my site is helping my users reach their objectives because I am going to have a link directly sent to my email where parents, teachers, and administrators can comment on the usefulness of the blog posts and what more they would like to see done.  I also would like to set up a comment section that will be embedded in the blog as well where anyone can post an idea for the blog. As far as my students, I plan on checking the blog posts on a daily basis to see that collaborating is completed and that they are following through with their objectives.

I am using edu.blog to develop my blog. The only customizations I am planning on doing is a custom calendar for the 5th grade activities as well as some kind of book review and a writing blog attachment.

I would like my site to be used as an information portal for parents, teachers, students, and our administration. Here are my objectives in regards to what my users will do when they visit my site:

• LWBAT see a calendar of events for our grade level with other grade levels of events linked
• LWBAT access other 5th grade teachers’ websites through a link for specific questions or information about that teacher
• LWBAT email administration or teachers directly from link regarding any questions they may have
• LWBAT read recommended book lists for 5th grade and collaborate on book reviews within the grade level or a class
• LWBAT access their students’ blog and post feedback to either their student or the teacher
• LWBAT  post comments or suggestions to teachers/students on ideas

This will be a collaborative website in that the students will have their own blog posts and will be reading and commenting on each other’s blog posts. The students will also have a book review area where they will be doing blog posts of the books they have read and what they recommend or thought about another student’s book review. I, of course, will be a collaborator on all facets of the website with positive feedback and responses to all writings.

I have decided to create a 5th grade blog for our school. I believe this will be an invaluable asset to not only the parents, but the teachers as well. My users will be our school which will include parents,teachers, administrators and students. As stated earlier our school and grade level has very little communication when it comes to activities that are going on throughout the school year. As the grade level sets up our agenda we need a venue for effective communication with our parents as well as a sharing of knowledge with other teachers and administrators. For the second year in a row my principal has come to me acknowledging that we must come up with a better way to communicate as word of mouth amongst each other has proven unreliable. My goal for this website is to set up a venue for anyone at our school to go and see an agenda of activities for our grade level. This will include field trips, fundraisers, end of the year events, and general communication amongst 5th grade. This will be a collaborative tool for all of us. I also would like my fellow teachers’ web sites linked directly to the blog for any further communication. I believe this is a long time coming in our grade level, and the fact that I am doing this as a learning process makes it even better. I think our school will love to read it and check in on the latest that is going in. I don’t think skills/knowledge will be an issue because typically around 80% of my class owns a computer. I also think that the teachers and parents, especially my administration, will be incentivized by the fact that they will be receiving their communication via the Internet which, at our school, is a preferred method of communication.

I am very excited that my classroom is receiving netbooks this year. As part of this new adventure that my students will be taking on I have several ideas to make the transition to a classroom rich with technology. They are listed in order of interest.

CLASSROOM BLOG FOR EACH OTHER

As part of the I21 grant my students will all be receiving netbooks this coming school year. Although I realize students these days are much more computer savvy, I would like to develop a blog where my students can post ideas, issues, thoughts, or anything that comes to their mind about using these computers. It will be an interactive blog where I will be responding with my thoughts and fixes as well as students interacting with other students about their thoughts on anything from a new website they may have found to how to fix an issue another student may be having.

5TH GRADE BLOG

Our school is a K-5 school. During the course of a year our grade level is doing fundraising for our end of the year activities and promotion. I would like to develop a blog about 5th grade activities and fundraising for all of the parents to access. This blog would be a “one stop shop” for parents to get information about anything our grade level is doing from field trips to our end of the year activities. I think this would be a great way to communicate with all parents and would also help keep the grade level all on the same page. The teachers would have access to the blog as well as linking the blog to other 5th grade teachers’ websites for any additional information about a specific class.

CLASSROOM BLOG

I would like to develop a blog for my classroom. This blog would be accessible for my parents and my students. I envision the blog with a link for individual blog posts from the students. A calendar of events for the classroom.  An interactive journaling post. Pictures and movies from activities doing during the school year. One of the blogs I really liked was one from Australia called “Blog Dogs”. I thought that was a great model for any teacher for a classroom blog.

Hi There..My name name is Reggie Patch. I am a 12 year teacher with the SDUSD and teach 5th grade. I am a huge baseball fanatic and travel to baseball parks all over the country. I also love going to auctions and finding surprises wherever I go. I am engaged to a Raider fan…football season in the house is not fun!!

Three things…try to figure out which one is the lie:

1) I have been adopted twice

2) I “ran” into x-President Ford

3) My lifelong ambition was to be a police officer

 Me with Joe, my fiance’s, granddaughter on my front porch…:)

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