Brrrrr....it's freezing outside!!! I'm glad I can sit at home and cuddle with my blanket all night :)

Yesterday at the MySpace Generation Webinar, I was very intrigued by several pieces of information. For instance, I knew that Wikipedia was a very popular website, but I had no idea that it was now the top free online education site. I am very disappointed that a site this well known and used is banned in so many schools. I believe that it should be allowed for student use as long as a teacher addresses the fact that it can be modified by anyone, and that students should be very critical thinkers when using this information. Another idea that really impressed me was when Mr. O'Neal suggested using blogs from political and news websites as a lesson in effective vs. ineffective writing. Several such blogs often have people posting their opinions with no relevant backup information and many times complete with very explicit language. This would be an excellent real world example of why it is beneficial to have good writing skills. I also loved Mr. O'Neal's recommendation of sites such as Ning, Edutopia, and Teacher Tube because without his recommendation, I probably wouldn't have known of these excellent teaching resources.

So now what? How am I going to translate this to my own teaching? I believe that having a class Wiki will not only engage students in course material, but it will offer a great resource for students I will have in the following years so they know what to expect and the expectations I have for them. I also like the idea of using various sites to get my students communicating and collaborating online.

This webinar was very interesting and has really expanded my resources. We'll see where else I can incorporate these great ideas that Chris O'Neal presented!

My First Post Ever...

So...this is my first ever blog post. Pretty cool huh? I must say that I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing so far. I don't think I'm really interesting enough to have my own blog and I'm sure no one will read it, but oh well. I think I'm going to use this space to post cool things I find on the internet and stay tuned to see what those are :)