First Day of School

Its the first day of school and hopefully you are excited.  In my class we will be discussing a variety of issues related to American History.  As you may have heard in my Voki, we will be using this blog and my wikispace this school year.  Hopefully it will be something you can enjoy.  I will ask you at different times throughout the semester to respond to discussions here by posting a reply.  These discussions will center on the topic being discussed in class.  So if you have questions about what is going on in class you can post the question or you can go to my wikispace: historyandmrsbidwell.wikispace.com and see if you can find the answer there.  I hope that your first day is a good one and I hope that you have a wonderful school year.

Mrs. B

Decisions, Decisions

I am awash in ideas for my classroom this year but I cannot settle on any one thing that I want to do.  I know that I want to use the new technology I've worked on this summer.  I know I want to use interactive notebooks.  I know I want to increase the use of primary documents in my regular education classes.  Procrastination is setting in and I think I have plenty of time but I do not.  There is now less than a month before school starts once again and all my free time will be gone.  So what to do?  I know what I need to do: set up a to do list which is prioritized by what needs to happen first.  That is what I will work on.  Wish me luck!

What would I do without her?

If you read my earlier post you know that I was stymied by my lack of technological know-how for inserting widgets into my blog.  My niece, my WONDERFUL niece, helped me figure it out.  I am very blessed to have her in my life and I enjoy our chats!

Technological frustrations

Today's frustration comes from trying to put a widget into my blog but finding it to be more difficult than I anticipated.  The problem stems from a basic lack of html/xml understanding.  My directions tell me to copy and paste the code in the space provided but there is no space provided.  At least not to my untrained eye.  I have tried the html tab and pasted what I thought was the correct code in the proper line, closed the code but I still get either an error message telling me its not correct or a feedjit link that does not update.  UUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

New Technology

I have discovered that there are a seemingly endless array of gadgets and tools that I can use to make my blog more attractive. I also have created a wiki but to be honest I am a little intimidated as to what to do with it. I hope that I will become a little more knowledgeable about these things before the school year begins. A month of summer is almost gone and it seems that the clock is ticking. Stay tuned to see what I come up with.

RMB

I have created this to help bring both me and my students into the 21st century. My intent is to incorporate its use into my teaching. I would like to have students respond to posts and I hope to post videos and/or music related to what we're studying and/or discussing. Students find the textbook to be boring and maybe I can engage them with this blog. We'll see. If you have any suggestions please let me know. Any help will be appreciated.