While I have had a little bit of experience creating web pages, I have never made a website.  It has also been a long time since I created a webpage.  When I visit websites, I usually think that they are very professional looking.  They always look like they were hard to make and took long periods of time.  While I still think that this is often the case, I have recently learned about a Web2.0 tool that makes creating a website a piece of cake.  This tool is called Weebly, and if you are reading this post, you have found my Weebly! 

My journey with Weebly began a couple of months ago.  The first step was to go to Weebly.com.  When I arrived at the site, I learned that users have the option of creating a free account or a Pro account, which includes a fine.  I chose to create a free account.  Once I made the account, I made my very first site.  Even with the free account, users can create multiple sites.  This is helpful because different sites can serve for different purposes.  I created the link to the site and began making my pages.  On the home page, I uploaded a photo of myself and wrote a couple of paragraphs introducing myself to readers.  Then, I created a blog page.  It is so easy to create pages and blog pages on the website.  I created a blog page called “Let’s Chat!”  Since the time that I created the site, I have added a couple of other pages to my website. 

While I have never written a blog before, I have read many blogs.  I enjoy reading blogs because they are a great way to stay connected with people.  However, I also think that blogs can be a wonderful source of information.  For example, I have looked at multiple blogs that classroom teachers have created.  They have been very helpful in the sense that the teachers share wonderful ideas and often post freebies on the blog.  While I do not personally know these teachers, they often do a great job of really connecting to the reader.  I think that people often blog in ways that allow readers to feel connected to them.  This is the case even when people do not “know” the person who wrote the blog.  It is important that bloggers “talk to the reader” through their writing.  This is what causes readers to feel connected—it becomes a conversation that is happening online. 

As I mentioned before, I find Weebly to be very user-friendly.  One reason I think it is user-friendly is because of how simple it is to add videos, photos, files, and much more to a blog post.  These are just a few of the many features that are in a Weebly blog post.  To add more than just text to a blog post, all you have to do is drag the icon representing the feature you want to add from the top of the page and drop it in the post.  It’s as simple as that!  There are many things that can be added that really enhance the overall blog post.  For example, after I blogged about a Web2.0 tool called VoiceThread, I was able to embed my finished product right into the blog.  It was so quick and easy for me to add the video!  It is also very helpful for readers, as they have access to the finished product with just the click of a finger.  They will be able to see an example of what I had written about in the blog.  How neat!  

In my opinion, Weebly is a great Web2.0 tool that is very user-friendly.  I have had very little trouble with Weebly.  Also, I usually have no trouble finding support if I am unsure how to do something.  If you do not have your own website and desire to make one, I would recommend using Weebly.  It is very quick and easy, and far from intimidating.  If I can create and maintain a Weebly, so can you!  Click here to create your own account. 

I recently had the opportunity to learn a little bit more about lesson plans and the most effective way to write them.  This lesson plan was different from what I am used to because the format was a little different.  Instead of creating three centers for the children to work in, I focused on integrating technology into the lesson.  In the past, I have written lesson plans that included a little bit of technology.  For example, I have used a SmartBoard to write children's predictions about a story.  The SmartBoard allowed me to write in front of the kindergarten class, which is very important because young children need to see writing modeled.  While I have included technology in my lesson plans in the past, I have never written a lesson plan with technology being one of the big focuses.  

The journey of this lesson plan began a couple of weeks ago with Tennessee Curriculum Standards.  I was assigned a Web2.0 tool to investigate and learn about.  I learned much about Voki and how it is being used in the classroom by both teachers and students.  I also created a student sample of what I imagined the students knowing as a result of the lesson I had just taught.  For this assignment, I focused on second grade reading standards.  I made the student sample as a response to a novel that the child had just finished reading.  After demonstrating for my class how to use Voki, as well as learning from my classmates about other great Web2.0 tools, I learned about another step in the journey.  This step involved the work I did for Voki.  I was to write a lesson that I imagined myself teaching that would lead up to the students responding on Voki.  The Voki would be used as an assessment tool.  I could watch the students' finished avatars from Voki to see what they had learned.  I made the assessment piece before I actually wrote the lesson.  As you can see, I came in the back door with this assignment.  It almost seems like an opposite way of doing things, but I think that it worked out very well.  Since the assessment piece was already made, I understood what I wanted the students to learn.  Because of this, I was able to design the lesson in a way that I could make sure that the students were learning what I wanted them to learn, as demonstrated by their responses on Voki. 

It was a great refresher for me to review how to write effective lesson plans.  There are several steps in a written lesson plan, and it is important that we are familiar with each step.  One new aspect for me on this lesson plan was the addition of Bloom's Taxonomy.  According to Bloom, there are six levels of thinking and they are arranged in an hierarchy.  The lowest level of thinking is knowledge, followed by understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  It is very helpful to look at the different verbs that go with each level.  These verbs are very helpful to include in the objectives portion of the lesson plan.  I also enjoyed having the opportunity to learn about the integration of technology.  This was very helpful to me because it was a fairly new experience for me.  

Click here to see my finished lesson plan. 

What about you?  How do you integrate technology in some of your lessons?  I'd love to hear your ideas!