Glogster Project: The Children of Central American Immigration

Please take a few moments to experience the wonders of Glogster!!  Although I think they still have some kinks to work out, when it came to my most recent project for a class, I knew I wanted to do an interactive collage.  So, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I broke out the ol' Google search and alas, I cam upon Glogster.  Below is a little sneak peek, but here is the link to the public page for this collage to truly experience it:  http://erither.edu.glogster.com/the-children-of-central-american-immigration/. Enjoy and please, I am ALWAYS open to any and all feedback!

Discovery Education offers FREE Common Core Academies "to provide best practices in using digital content to implement the CCSS, digital resources for immediate classroom integration, practical implementation strategies, and more"

Take note!! Discovery Education is offering these free "academies" in English Language Arts, Mathematics and Leadership! I plan to eventually take all three just to become more well-rounded!

Prezi presentation, Tech in the Classroom: An easy introduction for educators who are looking to implement more tech tools in the classroom

First thing, first!

As the first entry to this blog, I want to give a brief idea of who I am and why I am doing this.  Currently a grad student in pursuit of my MARTS with Secondary Licensure, I am working on combining my passion for education and my (sometimes unrequited) love for technology...although not all technology, because as you will learn from this and future posts, I am a strong believer that some technology is just a total waste of time and energy (which are very valuable resources, especially in education)!  My ideal position would be twofold; utilize my business and technology skills to assist educators and/or school systems in choosing and implementing technology, as well as teaching 3-4 technology courses to secondary students.

The concept of this blog is to post, discuss, post, discuss and then discuss some more the many technology options that are available to educators.  One of the most important initial steps in this long, perpetual journey is to not let yourself be immediately overwhelmed by all of the choices, possibilities, etc that are out there.  This is almost impossible, because there are so many possibilities that it is quite easy to start feeling like this guy pretty quickly:

I do not want you to feel like this...and I definitely do not want you to look like this.

The first thing that I recommend you do in order to get some imediate relief from head-exploding-related symptoms, is to get off of the Internet (eek, a techie saying to log off!! It must be the intercyberweb apocalypse!!) and sit down, review your curriculum, lesson plans, etc and come up with no more than 2-3 learning outcomes that you, as an educator, want to achieve with your students.  This will be the foundation that you will use to start researching, and eventually selecting and implementing, the oh-so-carefully chosen technology that will (hopefully) become your super, duper, best friend forever inside that classroom.  Then you can position yourself to begin your search and selection process feeling a lot more like this guy:

See, doesn't this guy seem pretty dang chillaxed??  ZZZeeeennnnnnnnnnn as heck, if you ask me.

A very important thing to remember is that just because some new, shiny, fancy technology has been recently released and is all the craze right now, does NOT mean it is the right choice for you.  So while you go work on that, I will work on finding some cool, clever stuff to post here, as well as what I recommend for your next step....see you soon, my new techie-teacher-BFFs!


head-exploder-guy photo credit: Lorenz A. Russ via photopin cc
peaceful-happy-guy photo credit: danorbit. via photopin cc