As an educator, he is definitely going in the right direction, he ensures that his classroom has a good time while at the same time learning how to take school seriously. He allows technology to to help the kids learning in the classroom. He's a great educator that I am more than sure has great success with his students.
He is definitely strict in the classroom, he gives the children a few chances to turn in their work; still with consequences though and that consequence is a dropping letter grade every day that it's late. He also requires the students to be up to date on their classblogs. Their classblog is what they use as their classroom newsletter for the students and parents to read. I think that it is such a great tool to use, so parents can know what's going on in their children's classroom everyday. Children often forget things that they are supposed to go home and remind their parents about, but with the newsletter available at anytime with classroom updates gives the parents a chance to be involved. This is also a better way to get in touch with the teacher, because I know that can be hard trying to get your parents in touch with the teacher. The parents can just comment on the page and ask questions that can be answered quickly, instead of waiting on a phone call. His classroom rules seem very laid back and easy to follow. I think it's really great that he uses gestures in the classroom to get his students involved. It makes it a little more exciting in the classroom if the teacher requires you to make gestures in response to him to let him know your paying attention. His rules seem a little bit more strict than Dr. Strange's, but like in the video we watched about procrastinating; having late work is not encouraged and their will be penalties. I think it's funny how one of his rules are to make his "dear teach happy".
Everyone needs is the first thing under the syllabus and the first thing is a planner. I'm not sure if this was another metaphoric thing that were supposed to look at since part of the assignment is to comment on what everyone needs means. I know that if the planner was one of them that we are supposed to look at, then a planner is a must in the classroom to help the students stay organized. Planners are always important to help students stay organized through their classwork.
What he hopes to accomplish with this classblog is to share his classrooms work and have people be able to view what is going on in the classroom. He writes that he welcomes comments on their blog, which I think is really good that he encourages them because sometimes I wonder if people enjoy comments we post. I viewed down his wall and I noticed where he thanked Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class for all the comments. I noticed that they print off the comments and put them on the map. I'm sure the kids really enjoy reading the comments from older college students from Alabama.
I looked under the useful links and the two that I really liked were two websites; convince me and twitter news. Convince me is a website and it's about debating, topics are put up and you can vote which side you agree on and then comment with a response that can convince person to see your side of the argument. The twitter news was really cool, because you can have a newsletter set up that shows you twitter updates that are interested in what you like. I looked at one for Forbes and it had updates all about Forbes.
I liked the Edublog, I am not sure about the differences that blogger can use compared to Edublog. His blog has some really cool things on it; like the availability to chat with him, live feed tracker, google translate, song of the week, facebook like button and many more things. I like the live feed tracker, because it shows when people around the world have viewed his blog. I really want totake the time and learn how to put all these things onto my blog. Learning about these blogs really makes me want to have my students involved in blogging.
These students differ from other ones, because this blog is very detailed and you can tell the children are very technology literate. This is such a great knowledge to have in the classroom, these children will have no problem communicating through technology when they are through with Mr. McClung's class. I noticed the slideshare application that he uses for his classroom newsletter. I'm going to look further into that, because I really liked the set up. Mr. McClung is going to be a successful teacher and is a great educator. I would love to be a teacher like him one day, his classroom is reaching out to people around the United States and world showing great examples of how technology can improve the classroom!!
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