Blog Review #2

July 9, 2011

Website http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=67293

This blog was developed and maintained by a teacher named Tracy Muller. I thought her blog looked good for students and teachers, and it had some interesting technology aspects to it.  Tracy teaches in the Upper Grand School Board and likes to incorporate technology into her classroom, and I’m sure her students enjoy the fact that their teacher is tech savvy. Her website has over five thousand hits which I thought was impressive.  

One of the things I really liked about her blog was how parents and students are given a great way to stay in touch with things happening in the classroom. She uses the blog kind of like a journal for classroom highlights which can be shared with whoever is interested. She also uses the site to communicate specifically with students and to provide them with educational links to further enhance their learning opportunities.

One idea that I would like to use from Tracy is how she incorporates geocaching into her classroom. Geocaching, for those who are not familiar with it, is kind of like a modern version of a treasure hunting game. You need a GPS device, some co-ordinates to go searching for, and then you can spend as much time as you want to searching for the treasure (specific GPS location). Geocachers hide a container of some sort at specific co-ordinates (geocaches). They can leave something of their own in the container, and take something with them from the container to leave at further location. I think students would love an activity like this. It taps into the geography aspects of school and gives the students a chance to use modern technology in a game.

Another inspiring idea I learned about after going through Tracy’s blog was how she incorporated digital audio into her class. The class went on a trip to Doon Heritage Village to learn about early pioneers. On the trip Tracy had pictures taken from various things they saw while at the trip. She then assigned a picture to various students and they needed to create a digital audio description to go with the picture. I thought this was a great idea to generate student created material. The website she used was called voicethread.com which is definitely a website I plan on using in the future.

My only complaint would be that the blog could use some sprucing up. I think that the layout is a bit awkward, but the pros outweigh the cons and I would recommend this blog to anyone looking for a good way to broaden the communication from the classroom to the home.