I recently looked at three of my classmates websites first I went to Kristine Hepner’s site http://hepner.kristine.googlepages.com/ .  I like how the background was “clean” looking.  It was easy to navigate from project to project.  Second I went to Ashley Sperry’s websitehttp://ashleysperry1.googlepages.com/.  It was set up completely different then the other two I looked at.  Finally I went to Bret Derr’s website http://bretderr.googlepages.com/home and I have to say it looked very professional.  Of all that I looked at I liked his the best!  It had a lot of information and was very inviting.

You asked us to reflect on political candidates and education.  Well I have to be honest I have not been following the race.  I have heard a lot of good things about Obama from classroom buzz, but honestly I hope to start watching more closely.  I rarely watch television and when I listen to the radio it is a CD.  This makes me look very bad but I intend on brushing up before election time next November!!

I really like my website!  I love that it was so easy to create and after all the work we have done it really looks good.  I posted some extra things from my other classes.  I had to go back and look for things but I think that it really turned out nice.  I think I will continue to add to it.  If I could change one thing I would like to find out how to add music so that when you click on my site it is playing a song that I really like or that reflects my mood.  I love the quote gadget that I found.  I put Albert Einstein quotes on my homepage.  I think now that I am nearing the end getting ready to student teach I appreciate this more than I would have if I had taken this class earlier in my education.  I am working on moving from the student role to the teacher.  As a teacher I think it is important to have a professional portfolio to show administrators and parents how talented you really are.  I know that may sound like I am tooting my own horn but, I have worked hard on all of those assignments and feel that I should be proud to show them off.  http://miller.melissa2008.googlepages.com

My favorite podcast presenter should have been obvious from my reflections because I listened to him a majority of the time.  I loved “Speaking of History” by Eric Langhorst.  He sounds like he is truly an amazing teacher.  I would want to be in his history class.  He had so many great ideas about how to make history fun and exciting.  He had ideas about writing from the perspective of a bullet, introducing the Declaration of Independence as a breakup letter.  I am thinking of getting my middle school endorsement in social studies and I will use his website as a tool to help with new ideas.  His website if anyone wants to check him out is http://speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/

I will probably use the scrapblog tool.  This is a very easy way to organize photos plus it is kind of fun like scrap booking without the mess!  I will also continue to use my website because I am very happy with how it came out.  It is amazing to have something to show future employers.  In my classroom we may experiment with podcasting depending on the age that I am teaching. 

So I had lots of things I really enjoyed in this class.  A few I did not but, the question was what are five things that made me think.  Well I will start with the one thing I have been working on quite a bit that is my website.  I will discuss if further in a later question, but I had no idea how easy it was to make my very own website.  I really like that it is personal to me.  I also enjoyed the cool tools.  I think I will go back and explore them more when I do not have such a crazy course schedule.  I like the toondoo website that allowed me to make my own cartoon.  I thought this was very cool and could be easily used with students.  I also enjoyed learning to podcast.  All of my teachers use this in their classes and as a student I like that I can hear a class if I miss a day.  This will completely change a sick day in the future I think.  Even young students may enjoy hearing podcasts.  This is very inviting to parents who are interested in their child’s education I think.  Until this semester I did not know there was such a thing as teachertube.  Now all of my classes are talking about it if it weren’t for this class I would have never known about it.  Finally this blog site was an ah-ha moment for me.  I love the fact that I can tell my students, administrators, and parents that they can come to my blog if they are curious what is going on in my classroom.  I love this idea.

Just trying to figure this out!  I’m excited to see how this works.