Blog Assessment

Image Blog: I really enjoyed the image blog. This blog really helped to provide new resources and new readings to help better understand the importance of digital literacy. It took me to new blogs that teachers write. I like to feel connected with other teachers and realize that others are going through what I am in the classroom. The problem with blogs that I have found is sometimes files won't download or open, or people have a lot of things set to private while they are telling you about something fabulous they have done in the classroom (pictures, links, etc.). It's frustrating when you are trying to connect with other educators and can't see what they are doing or can't seem to get a response from the comment log. Other than that, I love being able to look at people's blogs.

Graphic Novel Blog: The graphic novel blog was fun! I have used storyboardthat.com in the past for understanding the plot of a story. The students love creating these scenes. I found it was kind of difficult to figure out how I wanted to be portrayed in the comic (I think having purple hair would be so cool!) and what kinds of things I wanted to ask and how that fit with the background and colors, etc. It's interesting to see even a little piece of all that goes into creating a comic or graphic novel (3 pictures of a comic strip does not equal to a graphic novel, I definitely know that!). I also liked asking questions on Facebook and having other educators respond their thoughts. It's great when we can connect and come together. My view of graphic novels has changed a lot with this course but also just over the course of my first years teaching. I didn't see them as valuable texts. Then I started justifying it to myself to read magazines at night, and realized that they aren't too different. Why not let the student read what they enjoy? Having to create a blog for this and portray what I wanted to say really made me look deeper into the greatness that is graphic novels.

Video blog: The lesson that I added in this was really fun. I didn't really like filming myself, but overall it wasn't so bad. When I read the article about reading texts vs watching them, I know I wanted to write about The Raven. I did this my first year and thought it was GREAT! Then, I pulled out my lesson plan for it and realized it really need revamping. So, I took what I had and searched other blogs and websites until I found a couple of lessons that interested me and that I knew I could tweak and combine to make a fun and effective lesson. It's amazing to see the students watch videos of a text or videos that really pinpoint certain literary elements and totally nail the analysis. The text adds the students imagination, then the video helps pull it together.


Overall:
I have always thought it would be neat to have a blog, probably because I read them all the time via Pinterest. Then I think, "what am I going to write about? Who cares that I know how to arm knit?" (by the way, that was a couple years ago, I've probably lost my touch. It's a tangled mess.) I liked being able to choose the kinds of blogs and being given a prompt. I feel that it was neat to see how other people thinking in our class.