Thing #3 - How I Plan to Use Blogs at School

Wow, I'm not sure how I'll use a blog yet for school...

Maybe I'll use it to get my students to turn in their computer lab writing assignments.

Maybe I'll get my 5th grade teacher team to use it to share ideas.

Maybe I'll use it as a personal "keep track of cool teacher stuff I find online" tool.

I could keep a private blog to track student anecdotes/achievement for the purpose of Quest nominations, SAT meetings, and/or parent conferences.

Maybe I'll have students make a group blog to share their progress on a web-based scavenger hunt for thematic unit-based content.

Since few of my students have home internet access, creating a homework blog or assignment list probably won't be the best use of a blog.

(And I'll link to that Edublog list of ideas here for future reference.)

UPDATE: In composing my Thing #4 post - I just thought of another thing I might do - use comments on a passage to encourage my students to become better readers by commenting on it, blog-style!

Thing #2 - Creating My Blog and Avatar

I decided on my posting name and the name of my blog by a need for creativity and my love of math! Instead of a simple enumeration of 23 things, I hope that this blog becomes an exponentially powerful learning experience, wherein I take each of the things and build on them so that they become way more powerful than they are when taken additively. So, yeah, "Things to the Twenty-Third Power." My posting name is my first name, conclusively anonymous but not, since my name's so unique.

My experience in creating the blog was pretty easy, since I've done it before - Blogger makes it simple for you. (Even simple enough, I dare say, for a 5th grader!)

My avatar reflect your personality because it's math-tastic! I created an avatar that looks kind of like my real self... I have red longish hair, and I stand in front of a math-filled chalk board sometimes... But she is, I have to say, slimmer and cuter! I didn't give her my body type - but not because I didn't want to accurately reflect it, but because they didn't offer that cool t-shirt in plus sizes! Tee hee!

Thing #1 - How I Want to Use This Experience

I want to expand on my blog-fu and pick up on a lot of ways to use Web 2.0 ideas/ideals in my teaching... if not with students, then in my relationship to other teachers and colleagues.

I've always considered myself a life-long learner. I am happiest when I'm interacting with people - or reading - and picking up new information. I LOVE taking courses (which is great for PFK requirements), and I really enjoy hanging out with smart people.

Upon viewing the 7 1/2 habits of life-long learners, I can pretty much say that teaching and mentoring others is my most natural habit. And I get paid for it as a teacher, yay! I love to share my enthusiasm for stuff. And, as a bonus, it helps me with learning, too, since the best way to learn something is to teach it (I've become very intimately knowledgeable about fractions this year)! I'm also extraordinarily habitually PLAYful - my puns and off-the-wall comments always crack up the people who're receptive.

The hardest for me, as with many people, is viewing problems as challenges. I can talk the talk on that one, and fake it for my students and colleagues, but as far as my gut instincts, problems are frequently excuses to give up, or reasons to gripe, or things that make me want to cry. I hope none of the 23 things becomes a problem - I'll try my best to conscientiously see them as challenges and not problems!

As far as setting up the blog, I'm pretty comfortable with it -- I've set up 3 blogs on Blogger already, 2 for personal use, and 1 for work use at my former job. The latter one didn't pan out very well. The other two I've been really lax on, since first-year teaching sucked up all my time over the past year. My feelings tended toward anticipation - I can't wait to see what we'll do next!

Thing #0 - An Introduction

Welcome to Things to the Twenty-Third Power! I know, I know... "Things²³" is not equivalent to "23 Things," but the way I see this course -- and technology in general -- is that things tend to grow, exponentially, as they're grouped together. We won't just have blogs and podcasts -- we'll connect them so we have podcasts ON a blog! Using these things in conjunction with each other? It's like their usefulness is multiplied!!!

I'm Summer Marshall, self-declared science geek, math teacher, and fifth-grade teacher at Floyd Elementary. I just finished my first year teaching. And, as a matter of fact, my certification from SBEC is in the mail TODAY! Woo hoo!

I heart my job ('specially now that school's out)!