Cassie's first blog

June 26, 2010
Assignment #1: How I will use a blog in the classroom
Class: Using Blogs as Effective Classroom Tools
Teacher: John La Ferlita

I have several reasons for wanting to learn how to create and use a Blog. I'm an assistant principal at a small private school. We have a website for our school provided by our corporate marketing department. It has a strict format with limits on what can be added or changed and at times appears canned. One reason I want to learn how to blog is to possibly create a sort of informal site that can be easily modified to share all the fantastic events and activities that are happening at our school. For example, we have a monthly All School Sing where individual musical talents are showcased. It would be great to write a quick blog with some uploaded photos or video on the day it happened. I think the blog would be more personalized and reflective of who we are and a great tool to reach out to parents and potential families.
Our teachers have websites that they can use to get information out to their students and parents. I hope to be able to share another tool that they can use for informal communication. Perhaps teachers and students will be able to set up a blog about a particular integrated study they are working on. For example, it would be great to have classrooms from other schools interact with the fourth graders when they are learning about Westward Migration. Perhaps students in the advanced math class can blog about their assignments or the art teacher can share more of her students' work with parents.
My last reason for learning how to blog is purely personal. I would like to blog about my creative hobbies including quilting, paper crafting, and gardening. I think it would be motivating to share what I'm doing and get feedback from others out there. I hope blogging will enable me to be more reflective about my work as well as expand my techniques and feed my creativity.