Current Web Presence

When I Googled my name earlier this week I brought up over 6 million hits, which given the apparent commonness of my name is not surprising. However none of them on the first 7 or so pages were associated with me at all. I know that my name exists out on the web in small ways. I have a facebook page, a personal blog on LiveJournal (I don't think I've ever used my last name here though.), I made a wiki last semester in TE 301, and my name appears on the websites for State of Art winterguard and the Spartan Marching Band color guard, which were both created by my roommate. To find all of these quickly through a Google search someone would have to know other facts about me, such as my membership in color guard, my hometown, or the classes I've taken. I've worked hard over the past few years to protect myself online and prevent anyone other than the people I allow from seeing any content I put on the web. For personal things like facebook or LiveJournal that is perfectly appropriate, however through this class I am beginning to see that there is importance in developing a more public web presence where I can put forth a professional image of myself and my work.

As I have looked through the Past Gallery and done my own exploration through building my web portfolio I believe that this will be a very useful tool for me as I work toward entering the workforce as a teacher in the next few years. This site will be a first step toward developing my professional web presence and can also serve as a place to display and share my thoughts and ideas about education. I can use it for future employers to have easy access to my resume, some information about me as a person, and my beliefs about teaching (my teaching philosophy). I also plan to use this site as a place to collect links to work I do on the web from all of my classes. I already have a wiki that I developed in TE 301 for my Literacy Reference Project and I plan to make a web site that serves as a collection of elementary school science resources for my honors option in SME 301. This portfolio will be a convenient place for employers and colleagues to access the work I have done preparing to enter the education field and the work I do from there. For this reason I created a page in my portfolio specifically for coursework. I want to present myself through this portfolio in a way that is honest, professional, and positive. I want others to see my ideas about the career I am enthusiastically about to undertake and hopefully they will give me feedback that I can use in the future.

Notable Education Blogs

This blog, the Class of Ambrose,was created by a 5th grade teacher at a school in Detroit. I took the time to look through this blog mostly because it came from a Michigan school in a grade I am interested in teaching. This teacher has clearly made good use of this blog to provide his students with information and resources to benefit their learning. Some of the early posts provide information for both students and parents with clear instructions on how to use blogs, along with links to other important technology. For example the teacher posted a link and instructions for families to download Firefox for their computers. Other things I liked about this blog were the posts announcing upcoming test dates and project due dates with study information included, descriptions of the GLCEs for 5th grade and the applicable GLCE for each topic they studied, and YouTube videos of lessons he had done in class for students to re-watch should they need a refresher on the material covered. I like how he lets his students know so much about the GLCEs and lets them see exactly which GLCEs they are covering in class and when. The YouTube videos seem to be a particularly useful tool for math, giving students the opportunity to see a math lesson a second time. He also provides his students with other math help resources.

The next blog, Simply Teaching, is written by a New Hampshire 4th grade teacher, posting his experiences in teaching and providing advice and ideas to other teachers. He focuses a lot of his posts around ideas for teaching that meant to be simple, but useful and effective. He provides price and product information from Amazon.com for many of the resources he uses, his goal being to show items that teachers can get for their classrooms that are less expensive. Other posts provide reviews of books he has used in his classroom, both resource books for teachers and fiction and non-fiction books for students. I really liked this aspect of his blog, since I'm always interested in other opinions about good books for children at the grade level I hope to teach. I find that blogs are great places to get the word out about good books, both in education and in general. This is definitely a good blog to check out for ideas on many aspects of teaching.

My New Blog

Welcome to the blog I have created as part of my CEP 416 class, Teaching and Learning with Technology here at Michigan State University. Until about a year ago when blogging was discussed in another one of my education classes I had no idea of the possibilities available through this and other technologies for use in the classroom. I still feel a little bit intimidated by the things I hear about how much technology is changing the face of K-12 education. I have to admit I still feel a little bit tied to more traditional methods of education, like those I grew up with. But if education is changing, then I'm willing to learn whatever I can to change with it.

A few things about me:
I am a junior here at Michigan State in the elementary education program. My integrated teaching minors are English and math. English/Language Arts has always been my favorite subject in school, mostly because I love to read so much. I'm very interested in children's and young adult literature and using literature in the classroom to create cross-curricular connections and open up student's minds to difficult issues. I feel that so many topics can be better understood and become more personal and accessible when placed in the context of a narrative. I'm beginning to see that blogging has huge potential for book discussion, book reviews and recommendations and other uses in the English/Language Arts.

Math is a subject that I don't particularly love for the sake of itself, but through years of hard work at it I became very good at math. I understand the struggles that so many students go through in math and I hope to be the kind of teacher who is competent and confident in my math teaching skills to explain thoroughly and motivate students to work hard in this subject. I'm interested to learn about technologies that I can use to help students engage in math and help them understand it better.

Outside of academics, the activity that consumes a great deal of my life is color guard. I have been a member of the color guard in the Spartan Marching Band here at MSU for the past three years. This winter is also my third season as a member of State of Art, MSU's winterguard team. For those unfamiliar with it, winterguard is a competitive activity that basically takes the color guard from the fall marching band and places them indoors in a gymnasium without the band, performing shows to recorded music that are much more intricate and dance oriented than outdoor marching band shows. I'm very excited because this year State of Art will be attending the world championship for winterguard for the first time. This event will be held in Dayton, OH on April 2-4, 2009. Our first competition is this coming Saturday, January 24 at Northview High School in Grand Rapids. Wish us luck! To find out more about these activities, here are some sites to visit:

State of Art
Spartan Marching Band
Michigan Color Guard Circuit (MCGC)
Winterguard International (WGI)