Thing 3

        I am getting certified in K-6.  Ideally, I would like to teach third grade.  Since I will be teaching such young students, using a blog will take a different form than it would in a high school classroom.  My students’ reading and writing abilities, not to mention typing abilities, will be much more limited than those of high school students.  Likely using a blog at this young of an age would not include posting and commenting by students.  In fact, I’m not sure of how exactly I would have such young students directly use a blog.  Instead, I think I would consult blogs and they would indirectly reap the rewards of what I learned from reading various blogs.  

I think I will more likely use blogs of other people than actually creating my own.  There are countless blogs on the internet that offer ideas from teachers from all over.  These blogs provide a way for teachers to learn new things and find new and different activities to incorporate into their classrooms.  Blogs may also offer insight into what has and has not worked in various scenarios in different classrooms.  Blogs provide a way to connect to other people and learn from their advice and experiences.  I feel sure that throughout this class, I will consult numerous blogs for ideas as I attempt to complete the 23 things.  Through the internet, information is now, more than ever, at our fingertips and consulting blogs that already exist may save me a great deal of time and effort and provide my students with the most enriching opportunities possible.  

Hopefully this class will enlighten me to some of the best blogs available so I can take full advantage of them as I graduate from this program and begin teaching.  As I’ve already said, I’m not a very creative person.  By consulting blogs, hopefully I will get ideas of how to incorporate more creative and fun things into my classroom.  I hope to take full advantage of the invaluable resource that blogs can be to me as I become a teacher.  If I did end up creating my own blog as a teacher, it could serve as a good resource to keep parents involved by providing them with up to date information about the happenings in my classroom and keep them alerted to important upcoming dates regarding school functions, tests, field trips, etc.  

Thing 2

        I have no prior experience with blogging.  When I lived abroad, I considered doing a blog for friends and family at home.  I never ended up actually doing one though.  Instead, I just emailed and posted pictures on facebook.  I have never really read blogs regularly.  I have occasionally stumbled onto blogs on the internet.  

My posting name is just my actual name.  I don’t consider myself to be overly creative, so my name seemed like the easiest thing to do.  The same thought was used in naming my blog.  “Emily’s 23 Things” seemed like the most straight forward thing I could title my blog.  Since I didn’t know much about this project, I didn’t think of anything more creative since I wasn’t really sure what I would be doing.  I’m a pretty private person and the thought of someone I might actually encounter reading this blog is not something I am looking forward to happening.  I’m sure that will inevitably happen as part of this project, but I can’t say that it is something I am eager to have happen.  

So far, I have been surprised with how easy it was to create this blog.  Had I known how easy it was before, I probably would have done one when I was in Spain.  I haven’t really had any problems thus far.  I had a small problem when I was trying to get my avatar to post, but that was because I didn’t read the directions very well.  Once I reread them, the problem was fixed and my avatar posted.  

I don’t really know that my avatar reflects my personality.  She doesn’t really look like me.  I got tired of looking through the hairstyles and settled on the one I chose.  She has on a blue shirt.  Blue is my favorite color and one I wear often.  Beyond that, I don’t really see any similarities in us.  I tried to make the avatar look like me.  I guess I don’t really have a good reason for doing so.  I just thought that since I had used my name (I hadn’t realized it was an option not to until I had already done thing 1) I would go ahead and make my avatar resemble me at least somewhat.  Like I said earlier, I’m not very creative, so I didn’t want to create one that looked completely different from me.  It was easiest to try to make her look like me, so that’s what I did.  I got tired of going through the clothing and hairstyles fairly quickly so what I settled on may not have been the best choice, but it is similar enough to me.  The background I chose was the beach (though I’m not sure that the background actually posted to my blog).  I chose this background because I love to travel and the beach is one of my favorite places to go.  

Thing 1

                Well, here goes nothing.  I have never blogged, and I have to admit that I am approaching this project with a bit of trepidation.  As I read through the 7 ½ habits, I found that habit one: begin with the end in mind was the easiest of the habits for me and one that I see in my daily life.  I have always been a very goal-oriented person.  I like to make lists and feel accomplished when I am able to cross things off of my lists.  It makes me uncomfortable when I do not have a goal or some sort of sense of direction.  I do not like the unknown.  I have always set high goals for myself and held myself to high standards.  When I graduated from college with what I learned was a useless bachelor’s degree, I found myself without a goal for the first time in my life.  It was a hard time, and I felt like I was floundering a bit without having any sense of direction.  I decided to take a year off from everything to take some time to think, so I moved to Spain for a year to teach English.  I had previously studied abroad for a semester and was hoping to find a way to go back for a longer period of time to improve my Spanish and travel more.  This year abroad afforded me the opportunity to improve my Spanish, travel extensively throughout Europe, and open my eyes to my future profession: teaching.  I had always resisted the idea of teaching and took this job more because of location than what the job actually was.  The job was merely a way to get me back to Europe so I could travel more.  When I came home from Spain, it was like that year had never happened: I still couldn’t find a job and still wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do.  What I did know was that I needed to figure it out and I needed to do so quickly.  I needed a goal as soon as possible.  I had really enjoyed my year abroad.  I found that I enjoyed teaching much more than I thought I would.  Finally, I decided to go back to school and I had an attainable goal once again. 

                I think the hardest of the habits for me would be habit six: use technology to your advantage.  I’m no technological genius.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way computer illiterate, but I don’t know or care to know how to do everything on a computer.  In middle school, when MySpace was all the rage, I resisted getting one.   I finally caved in college and got Facebook.  I’ve since resisted Twitter and Instagram simply because I don’t care to read anyone’s running stream of consciousness and I don’t need any more distractions keeping me from doing what I need to do.  I’m sure these things have a lot to offer, but I haven’t found them yet.  I think this is a habit I need to work on to ensure that my future students’ experiences with technology in the classroom are not as limited as mine were.  Technology in my classrooms as a student consisted of the teacher rolling in a cart with a tv and vcr on it.  The teacher would then spend about half of the class period trying to get a video to play while the students continued to grow more and more frustrated and restless.  When I was a student, I remember enjoying anytime we used technology in the classroom.  When I was in Spain, the students loved whenever we would watch videos or listen to music or anything else involving technology.  I think technology has so much to offer and can provide a memorable way for students to really connect with what they are learning.  There are so many ways technology can be incorporated into the classroom, and I hope to learn to better use it in my future classroom.  I’m currently working in an elementary school.  Since I’m younger than all of the teachers, any time they have a technological issue, they come to me.  Usually I can fix it through trial and error, but I’d like to learn more so I knew what I was doing instead of just jiggling wires and pressing buttons.  Hopefully this class will improve my technological abilities.