Introduction to Blogging:

Hello,  my name is Ms. Kaitlin Stricker, I'm an interdisciplinary education major, working with kids from birth to preschool. I'm getting married this June to my fiancee' John, we have a one year old son named Cayden. I have a brother named Ben, he is 19 years old and I have a adopted sister named Alyssa, she will be 20 in a couple of days.  In my spare time I love to go fishing with my family, I love to scrapbook, I especially love to read, my favorite author is Nicholas Sparks. I originally wanted to be a nurse, but I decided this past year to switch to interdisciplinary education. This came into light, when I began a job at Redwood, working with adults with disabilities. I realized through working there, that I couldn't imagine working anywhere else. I love working at Redwood, everyday I learn something new that helps me better myself in my career path.

Blogging can be a great tool for the classroom, not only to communicate with parents, but to communication with other teachers and students and get there input on the activities you would like to instill in the classroom or, when we have a learning function that involves our students we can post this, we can other ideas to keep for future reference, or to give other teachers ideas for their classroom. For instance when you look at Ms. Cassidy's blog you can see when the science center came to visit them, and other activities on her posts. When we look at the aspect of asking our students to write a blog, we will be looking at how they feel about their learning, what they love about it and what they might not like to much in classroom. They can even give the teachers ideas on activities or events that they think would pertain to their learning. They could find an activity that they really liked while they were outside of school and want to present it to the teacher as an option, that maybe the rest of the class would like to do. I think students blogging would be an amazing idea and one that I might instill in my future classroom, so I can get their input and hopefully help them to the best of my ability, and also make the classroom and learning experience awesome for them.

"We the People"  by Flickr user Truthout.org/ Creative Commons Licensed

In looking for a site that would become very beneficial to helping 3rd- 5th graders learn about the early United States history. Mission US, is a very fun interactive game that helps them students have more of interactive role in their learning. I feel that children should have fun while they are learning, this game does not only adapt to their age level, but it keeps them interested. Mission one, the students will be figuratively put in Nate Wheeler, who is a printer's apprentice in Boston in 1770, you will be virtually encounter the patriots and loyalist and will see the Boston Massacre, and the students must decide where their loyalties will lie. This is one of the 5 missions that our students can participate in. I think this will be a very great learning tool, I feel that when students are involved in their learning, they will virtually be able to retain more information and they will be better prepared for the tests etc.