learningIT

I came across learningIT (Art Teacher from Japan). This blog is written by a teacher in Japan, he uses this to share information with other teachers and sharing his lesson plans that he uses with his students. Most of the post on the site are about the porjects and lessons he is currently teaching the students. The post that stood out to me was Who Am I?. In this post he explains that he gave the 7th graders a task of keeping a visual journal. They were to answer the question “Who am I” but in a visual form.

I was so excited to see this lesson cause it would go nicely in an art class. This is how artist develop their identity, through their body of work. The idea of self expression as a portrait of some kind is so thrilling. This is a great example of something I would share with the other teachers via email and have them check it out. Perhaps get them involved by saying they can create their own response and share with the class on the web. This way they get to try out the blog and see how interactive it can be.

Classroom Blog review

I chose to review Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog located at . I came across this blog as I was searching for classroom blogs. I was not too exited about the layout of the site. I liked how I was able to see images of kids working on various activities. This site encourages students to make entries but I was not sure if the kids are actually making the post of the teacher is doing this on their behalf. Cause the postings of the kids are more about the images. Besides sharing fun ideas like making fairy-tale characters out of clay, Cassidy lets us witness her students’ learning firsthand by posting lots of videos and photographs.

One of the entry “Lady Bug” located at , shows how classroom blogs can be used to show the learning process and various lessons that are being thought. This blog was not really organized so it was a bit difficult locating certain information. On another entry by the same student Titan located at http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blog_id=1358233&mode=comment&blogger_id=349413#comments. you can see the comments made by a teacher, his father and another person not sure if they were a classmate.

As an art teacher, I would incorporate blog as a means of showcasing the students work, so typically art teachers would hand up students work in the hallways of the school. So I would take that concept and use a blog to deliver the same concept. Each student would have their portfolio and each class would as well. So the students can view and show their parents their current projects etc and parents can see how the class expressed their personalities via the given project. To encourage other teachers to use blogs, I would send out an email to other teachers in the school to have them check out the new body of work from the students and encourage them to make comments, I feel this way it will get them to interact and also see how it can used in their classrooms as well. On a professional level, I cold also use a blog to showcase my teaching strategies and lesson plans and share with other teachers tips and tricks that seem to have worked. I can also use it as a resume, to show my skills, experience levels and teaching portfolio.