Thing #3

At first, I thought that I would not find any uses for blogging. I am beginning to change my mind on that issue. I can see several beneficial uses of this form of technology. More than likely, I will be using a blog to help keep parents informed about what is going on in my classroom. This would be done in addition to our weekly newsletter but would also provide a way for parents to give feedback directly to me. I am also finding it helpful to write out my thoughts, it has already helped me to pinpoint some of my problems and what I need to do to correct them. I think that just a general blog about my day, kind of like a journal(but for the world to see), will be a good technique to use in working out any personal or teaching issues I am having.

I am still a little bit nervous about what kind of comments I will be receiving but I am sure they will be helpful too.

Thing #2

I named my blog Fulfilling My Childhood Dream for a very obvious reason. This whole blogging process is bringing me closer to my dream of being an elementary school teacher. Since I was a little girl, I have always wanted to be a teacher! Life sidetracked me for a little bit, but now I am back on the road to complete my goal. As I said in my first post, patience will play a big role in my success. I am trying really hard not to get discouraged, but I do tend to focus on the fact that I have been in school for so long and have more than enough credits, yet I still have about 2 years left before completing my teaching degree. I need to remember to keep my eyes on the prize instead of letting the numbers get me down.

I had fun while choosing my avatar. I did consider choosing someone completely different to base mine on. In the end, I decided choosing based on other people would only cause me to feel less confident. I am very happy with the way my avatar turned out. The eye and hair color (and kind of the style) are really my features. I also chose a purple shirt, well as close to that as I could get, because it is my favorite color. One last choice I made was more for my own encouragement, I placed myself in front of a classroom. That will be the ultimate completion of my dream.

Thing #1

After viewing the information on being a life long learner, I realized a couple of things about myself. First of all, the most difficult habit for me to master is #4- having confidence in myself as a competent and effective learner. I can not remember a time that I did not deal with poor self esteem which has caused my confidence to be very low in all aspects of life. As I have gotten older, my self esteem has become a little better. I am not sure if it is just a sign of my own maturity and that of those around me or the fact that having kids makes you say and do things you never thought you could. Whatever the reason for the improvement, I am hopeful that it will continue and I will be able to remove habit #4 from my problem list. Secondly, I found the easiest habit of a life long learner for me to follow is #1-begin with an end in mind/set goals. I am a wonderful goal setter! Unfortunately, I am terrible at following through. I find myself setting goals and then getting side tracked or depressed when things are not going as quickly as I would like. As I am writing this, I am beginning to see how my patience needs to improve. If I work on my patience, then I will be able to complete my set goals without loss of focus or getting upset.

I am looking forward to completing the 23 things and learning about the Web 2.0 tools. It will be nice to see, play with, and learn about the different free services available to me as a new teacher. I found the first few steps of this process to be rather easy. The blog set up just took a moment and was basically point and click. The hardest part of this is going to be the actual blogging. It was difficult to share the beginning of this post and I am sure some of the ones to come. I do not find it easy to open up and talk/"blog" to everyone. Hopefully, that will become easier too.