I have created an example of a monthly newsletter issued by an Elementary School. This document was created in Pages.

Newsletter PDF

I have created a lesson plan about Phonemes for the first grade classroom. This lesson focuses on rhyming and counting syllables. This lesson involves audio by incorporating a reading of Horton Hears a Who.

Audio Lesson Plan

Here is the Horton audio clip that the students will listen to:
Horton Final Cut

I have created an introductory lesson about Ancient China for a second grade class. This lesson plan utilizes video, by including a video clip from Vimeo.

China With Video Lesson Plan

I have created a lesson plan for a third grade class about the Food Chain, which utilizes Power Point for the presentation aspect.

Lesson Plan Ideas for Presentation

And here is the presentation:

I have obviously heard tons about Twitter since it is always all over the media, and I follow celebrity gossip so I do hear a lot about what the celebs are tweeting. Until recently, I had not participated in Twitter, but have since signed up for an account. I have chosen to follow a few people who have to do with education. I found these people by doing a search for “education” on the Twitter home page. So far, I have found the experience so-so. One of the people I follow, @lattesc, tweets throughout the day, each tweet being a link to an article about education. I’ve found these articles useful as someone who is going into the education field. However, she seems to post multiple articles each hour, so it is a little overwhelming to view all of these tweets. The other education people I follow post significantly less.

I think I will continue to use Twitter, both as a source to follow other education people, as also for the social aspect. I can definitely see the benefit in having the constant access to information. Though the amount of information is overwhelming, it is nice that I can choose what I want to look at or respond to.

Follow me at @lilmellyk, if you want. I am still just getting the hang of it.

I have researched both OpenCourseWare and Second Life and have had the chance to learn more about both programs. OpenCourseWare is a system that allows anyone to take courses at certain universities online, for free. Basically, it allows anyone, anywhere, to go online and look at educational materials, take courses, and do assignments. MIT was the first big school that started doing this, so I looked into their program. I viewed the course information for a Principals of Pharmacology course. This particular class had very extensive lecture notes. There was an option to view exams, with correct answers, as well as problem sets and assignments with solutions. Everything was incredibly detailed and, though I do not know much about Pharmacology, I felt as though I could benefit from the information offered in the same way that one would benefit for taking the class in a physical setting. I thought the idea of OpenCourseWare was cool, and useful. I see several advantages to it: the ability to have access to educational materials from universities across the country, and the ability to take courses on your own time, to name a few. I did see some disadvantages, however. I thought it could be difficult to get help if you did not understand the subject, since the professors will not be meeting with you face to face. Also, as we discussed in class, some may not fully see the value in taking a course online from, say, MIT, versus actually attending the school. We mentioned in class how some are quick to discredit online schools, and though schools such as MIT are renown universities, some may discredit the fact that a course was taken online, instead of in person.

I also researched SecondLife. SecondLife is a huge online community, where anyone can join and create a “second life” for oneself. This can be used for entertainment or social purposes, and can also be used for Education. I thought SecondLife was neat because you can go to any destination and meet all kinds of different people, that you may not have had the opportunity to interact with otherwise. From reading SecondLife posts on Classroom 2.0 I have learned that you can create or join groups with other educators. I can see how this can be a useful tool to be able to share ideas and experiences with others in your field. While I can see some advantages to SecondLife, such as the ability to have a class meet in a different and interesting place, interacting with new people, or the ability to take a virtual field trip, I did not really see how SecondLife would be tremendously useful in the classroom. I mean, it would be a way to do something fun and interesting in class, but I guess I am having trouble seeing the educational purpose behind it. I think it would definitely engage students though, so it could be a way to get students to absorb information they may otherwise find boring.

I plan to research SecondLife more, and to look at more message board posts about how current teachers are using it in the classroom. I think it does have potential, but in terms of comparing OpenCourseWare and SecondLife, I believe that OpenCourseWare has more substantial benefits.

My idea for this was to make a Wordle using the Shel Silverstein poem “Messy Room”. I would show students the Wordle and read the poem to the class. Then, I would ask students to analyze the Wordle by part of speech. I would ask them to explain which parts of speech the poem uses the most, either verbs, nouns, adjectives, and so on. This is intended for an Elementary classroom.

Here is the Wordle I made: