If you have any questions, raise your hand.

Open communication in my classroom is important. I have had teachers that do want students asking questions until they are done talking or sometimes they do not want you to ask a question at all. I do not want to be the teacher that my students do not like or can't feel like they can talk to me. I want my students to be open and honest with me at all times. I want my students to always feel free to be able to ask questions or talk to me. No question is stupid or unimportant. If I'm not sure of the answer, then we can find out together. Class discussion will be encouraged. If the students have any problems, I will listen, and I will do my best to make it known to them that they can talk to me or ask me any question they want.

Invovling the Parents

Having parental involvement in the classroom is a really good positive reinforcement key in having a child participate in the classroom. When one, or both, parent shows an interest in the classroom, or class activities, then their child show more excitement in their class and their classroom. My parents were a little involved with the classroom and I really honestly feel that was a little downfall to my education.

Having the parents involved in the classroom, not only gets the child more enthused about learning, but it also gets the parents involved and knows what the child is doing in the classroom.

blogging

Ok I'm writing a blog about blogging in a blog, kind of funny! Throughout this semester I have been blogging along with the rest of my classmates. We have commented on other students' blogs, we have commented on students' blogs in other countries and we have worked on our "professional blogs." Blogs create networks and help you learn from one another and even meet new people. Blogs are very important in today's technological society and I feel like this will be very useful in my teaching, for example I had a teacher in high school that used a blog to post all of our assignments and I will probably do this as well and post my students work to it. Blogging is very important for teaching and I fully plan on using it.

ITUNES

At first, I thought itunes was used only to downloads song and movies. In acuality, itunes is a great resource to pull from when you are wanting to gain some knowledge on a particular subject or listen to a moving speech and this can be done through iTunesU. It is a database filled with podcasts, videocasts, and other types of media. I will definitely be using this when I am teaching. I have always thought itunes was very educational and useful.

Attitudes about Teaching

My attitudes on teaching are pretty simple. Teachers should always be "co-learners", always keeping an open mind on learning. Something that Dr. Strange said on the first day of class will always stick with me is "burp back education" and teachers should never use this method and I will do everything I can do to keep this from becoming how I teach. I do not want to teach my kids something and then they just remember it for tests, I want what I teach them to stick with them in life.

Teachers should never be closed minded and think they know everything there is about teaching. Teachers are in the classroom to make a difference in a child's education and that is exactly what I plan on doing.

Becoming a Teacher

I decided to become a teacher just last year. I had been toying with the idea for a few years and after 3 years of "finding myself" in Tuscaloosa and having to move back home, I realized this is something I want to do with my life. Everybody has that one teacher that sticks out in their mind and I want to be that teacher to my students. No matter what age I am teaching, it is never too early to be using the tools we learned about and used in this class. I will probably get my students to post their work to blogs just like the students did in our comments4kids assignments.
Becoming a teacher is no easy task but I am making it and will not give up.

Tools

Some of the tools that I will use in my teaching are:

Google Earth
Blogging
Podcasting
Videocasting
Skype