First Day of School

Welcome to school.

This is going to be an exciting year. We will be studying math, language arts, science, and social studies in class, as well as specials including art, science lab, music, P.E., and computers.

I can't wait for the year. Please remember to read and comment on each others blog's.

Have a great day,

Mr. Strayhorn

Open House

WOW!! I can't believe it is time for school already.

Tonight was open house and I had many students that showed up. Thanks for coming, Jamie, Jennifer, Jack, Matthew, Taylor, Aislinn, Anna, Nathan, Chyanne, and Devin. To the rest of you, sorry that you did not make it here.

I am looking forward to a great year, I hope you are too.

See ya September 7 at 8:42 for a great beginning day of your 5th grade year.

Enjoy the rest of summer,

Mr. Strayhorn

School Starts soon

Aug. 14, sitting at the campground, thinking about what is happening for the school year. Who is going to be in my class? What it will be like? How many students this year? Will they like the new style of the room? How willing are they to change? So many questions to ask, but they will all be answered very soon.

School starts September 6th? something like that, I am almost ready.

Looking forward to meeting my new students.

Mr. Strayhorn

Thing 23--You Made IT/ NO, I made it!!

I made it, what a wonderful feeling. The only problem, is that I just put everything off until the end of time to complete the class and I felt rushed. As my students might say, my bad.... :)

Anyway, what a great opportunity for me as an educator. I learned many new things that I will use, and some that I just don't see me putting into my life either personally or educationally. There is so much more out in Web 2.0 that we did not even touch, but I am so glad that I had the opportunity to be part of this class.

Ya know, many people take a class and forget about using what they learn. Well, I took many notes and plan on referring to them frequently. Will I use "things" in my class, yes, I will.

The last video that we watched, I really agree with. We have so many opportunities for educating student with technology, but we put that aside and don't use it. How do kids communicate these days? Texting, e-mailing, blogging, facebooking, and the list goes on and on. I agree that we need to stick with basics in the classroom, but putting technology into the classroom is a necessity that districts really need to look back at.

I hope that I can really use some of these "things" without getting any backlash or comments from administration for allowing my students use technology to learn.

Loved the class content, love the learning style, love on-line learning. Thanks for putting this class together, it has been very helpful.

Thing 22--Online Video

I love YouTube for the classroom. It is blocked in our district, but we can have it opened up if we request it. I do use it in my class and students love it. Obviously there are some videos that are not school appropriate, so using TeacherTube and SchoolTube is very helpful. Another great site is GodTube, I know we can't really discuss church in school, but there have been some good videos that are usable in school also.

YouTube? Use it, I love it.

Thing 21--Your Heart will be a Twitter

Here comes my honesty again, I really don't care for "twitter". First off, it sounds like dealing with a bird, "what are you doing?" "Oh, I am tweeting". It just does not appeal to me. Now, that was all just what I thought before I investigated the Twitter Search. After going through the twitter search, I feel the same way. I looked up my city, Byron Center. Great, I am glad that this person is at this place in Byron Center, and I am glad that this person is working out in Byron Center, but I really don't care.

Now, how would I use it? Well, I don't have plans to use it. I really don't care to tell everyone what I am doing, nor do I care to let everyone know where I am. It really does nothing for me at all. To go to the flip side of the coin, I don't care that Sue is at McDonalds, and Steve is at the library. If they have something to tell me or want me to know, they can call me.

I know, I know, I really sound like a stuff shirt here, but "Tweeting" is not for me. So, with that said, I guess that I won't be using it in my professional life, in my classroom, or even in my personal life. Oh well, so they say, not everything is for everybody.

Thing 20--Bookmarking with del.icio.us

Now that I have looked at del.icio.us, I think this is wonderful. I love the ease and simplicity of being able to organize and keep my websites easy to find and access, as well as being able to look at other tagged sites.

My del.icio.us user name is teacher9363@yahoo.com, so feel free to see what I have tagged so far. I have put a few of them into "personal" status, so sorry you can't check them out. Anyway, I see this as a VERY helpful tool for me to put sites out there for students to look at, or utilize for a project or presentation. As for fellow teachers, this will make it so easy to share with them. I can't tell you how many times that I have received an e-mail with a great website, just to only loose it because I did not save it. Now, we as educators, can share our sites very easily with others through del.icio.us.

Productivity? Do I think this will help? You bet. This will make looking up websites so much easier, either mine, or anyone else that is tagged according to what I am looking for. For example, I just did a search for "adding fractions" and came up with 452 tagged sites, this is incredible...

I see myself using this at home as well as in the classroom, both with students and fellow teachers. Everyone needs to know about Del.icio.us, and I will do my best to spread the news withing my district.