Week 7 - Post #1

As I began this blog assignment, I figured that it would be an easy 15-minute task that I would go through just to receive credit.  That was not the case.  I spent well over 2 hours perusing through blogs, websites, and twitter pages.  I was pleasantly surprised by what I found and excited to put it to use and share with colleagues and family.  Here is what I found:

1) http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/stem-education

I chose to feature this blog mainly because it pertains to STEM, which is an acronym for the concentration areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.  The blog contains solid information on the present and future of the 4 subjects and is particularly of use to me because I teach the upperclassmen at my school and they are constantly asking questions and seeking opinions on those fields.

2)  http://blog.mrmeyer.com/ and @ddmeyer

I saw Dan Myer speak at a math conference last year and he was really impressive.  His blog contains a bevy of resources and ideas to use in the mathematics classroom.  His presentation dealt with perplexing students with math and I collected resources that he shares with us a year ago.  He has great ideas and thoughts on the future of education stating that he wants to help “move from education's print past to its digital future”.  I kind of killed two birds here because I also followed him on Twitter.

3) http://www.edutopia.org/blogs/beat/game-based-learning and @edutopia

Two birds again!  I started following Edutopia on Twitter and immediately did some digging.  My initial thought: What an awesome resource!  I literally spent an hour reading through the “Games-Based Learning” blog.  My students are constantly complaining about how learning math and science isn’t any fun.  Well, this blog offers up the ideas and techniques for all subjects, not just math and science.

4) http://www.edutopia.org/blogs/beat/brain-based-learning

This is another blog that caught my interest after I started following Edutopia.  The blog is not just for teachers, but rather all stakeholders in education.  I got held up on the entry entitled “Student Responses to Common Core Instruction and Assessment” because of my interest on the topic, but anyone can get stuck at this blog for hours.  Another great resource!

5) @aimsed

This organization caught my attention because they were tweeting about teacher frustration with developing math activities aligned to the common core.  They should be a good follow and offer loads of help in regard to the understanding of math and science.

6) @AlgberaFact

I must start looking for resources like this on Twitter so I can disseminate this to my students because Twitter dominates their lives!

 

7) @WeAreTeachers

A good follow for educators due to the innovative ideas and professional resources.  I also surfed their website for a bit which is very similar to Edutopia.  There is  a community menu on the site that will lead you to their blog (http://www.weareteachers.com/community/blogs/weareteachersblog)

All in all, I just scraped the surface of what is out there.  Honestly, besides setting up my RSS reader, I haven’t done much with these tools until now.  I created a Twitter account about a year ago to research it as a resource to communicate with students, but lost interest in that endeavor.  There has been some trepidation associated with Twitter, but I am appearing to overcome it.  As previously stated, my students are fluent in Twitter-talk and I want to do my best to become more familiar with the platform so that I can put it to use in the near future.