Brain Fun, Fun Brain

After evaluating varying aspects of the website "Fun Brain", I would definitely recommend this site for students' use. Fun Brain is an educational website geared towards students in preschool to grade 8. This website focuses on developing skills in math, reading, and literacy.

Fun Brain provides over 100 free, scholastic games relating to the subjects in focus, along with a selection of comics and popular books, including Diary of a Wimpy Kid. This website is published by Family Education Network, part of Pearson, the education, services and technology company. This publishing company provides many educational resources, making this a reputable website for students' use. Fun Brain would be a great tool for spare time in the classroom or for additional learning at home, and seems like a very enjoyable and beneficial learning website. 

Blog About a Blog

I am the kind of person and student, that likes visual learning. I am definitely a supporter of technology in the classroom, as I think there are various engaging activities for every subject using different forms of technology. The blog EduTech for Teachers: Cool Tools for the 21st Century immediately caught my eye when looking through educational blogs. For starters, this blog is incredibly easy to navigate and find what you are looking for, whether that be weekly updates, contacting the author, translating the blog into another language, or finding the resources of her posts, everything on this blog is user-friendly. While being able to examine different pages of the site, I was mainly just fond of the theme and display of the blog. Incorporating traditional styles of teaching into the classroom is an important aspect when integrating technology. With that being said, I love that this blog chose the theme to look like a notebook, with the sidebar resembling a notepad having writing for the titles of each section.

In addition to the accessibility of this blog, I loved the useful and unique additional link that this blog added to their page. Each week's blog post has a description of the main idea of learning for that week. Along with the description, there are links which take you to various sites that explain more about the specific topic of the week. Each week's topic has a beneficial lesson for teachers, including this week's post, talking about "New-O-Matic", which is a daily news app for kids. EduTech for Teachers also has a weekly blog post called "Diigo Weekly Update" which contains a variety of games, useful teacher resources, and activities for the classroom. This is a great way to always find something new to do in the classroom, to try to keep the students as engaged as possible, instead of sticking to a daily routine, never having any surprises. This blog is has countless resources for teachers, giving ideas to incorporate technology in the classroom and giving multiple ways to do so. 

Course Expectations

When I first signed up for this class, I was excited to actually be taking a class that related to what I want to do in life. I'm interested in the classes for my major, Psychology, but education classes are much more intriguing to me and my career goals. I like to think that I am reasonably tech savvy, in general computer use. I took a computer tech course in high school and learned a lot about different software, databases, useful tips and general knowledge about computers. This course has helped me to be efficient and productive with technology, but I am excited to be in TPTE 486 to take my previous knowledge, and learn more about how to implement technology in the classroom. 

In the first two weeks, we have already learned new things to incorporate into the classroom and I am excited to continue to learn about other important uses of technology. I think technology is incredibly useful for the classroom in various ways and in today's world especially, really captures students attention, more than just writing on a board or talking aloud. Technology provides the opportunity for collaborative online group work, work from home, educational games, and countless other beneficial tools. 

One thing that stands out in my interest of this course is incorporating a class website into my future classrooms. As we have already learned, a course website is a great way to keep students and parents frequently updated on news and assignments going on in the class. I think it is a great way to keep everyone involved and provides more of a community for everyone in the classroom to keep in touch. I am excited to learn more about it and everything else we will learn in this course.