Search Engines & Web Portfolios

When I searched Tiffany Lynch through the search engine Google, I found my name on the most popular social networking site known as Facebook. I was very pleased to see that the women with my same name were not me. I do have Facebook but I think it could be dangerous in the sense that my name could be linked to websites and search engines such as Google and Yahoo. I personally do not want my Facebook to be shared with the rest of the world. Facebook is a social network that I use to keep in touch with my family and friends only and I do not want people that I do not know to be able to see my picture and “add me as a friend.” Luckily, Facebook had the option of putting search engines on a privacy setting, so no one can search you on the web. I decided that would be the best decision to use for my personal privacy. My name also came up on other websites such as classmates.com or other professional profiles. The most popular sites that were constantly showing up throughout the search were about an artist named Tiffany Lynch and her artwork. She has posters, vases, prints, frames, etc. Even though there were millions of searches with my name, I find it interesting that I didn’t find anything about me personally.

Even though I previously stated that I did not want search engines to search my name via Facebook. I think that having my personal web portfolio be on public display online would be a great asset to my career as a professional. With this portfolio, I not only want to be viewed as a professional, but I also want it to describe myself truly and accurately. I can accomplish this by stating my personal interests and goals in life as a person and future teacher. My resume is another component of my portfolio that will allow my future employers to view. I also decided to add a section called experiences in my portfolio because I think it is important for people to see the different kinds of interactions I have had with children throughout the years. Although resumes are very professional with the types of experiences I have had, I think the experiences portion in my web portfolio could be an extension to my resume. I can go further in depth by talking about specific and memorable events I have encountered while working with children. Employers are not the only ones who can benefit from my web portfolio either. My family and friends can also enjoy it because they are an important part of my life and they are shared in my portfolio through text and pictures. I will continue to update my web portfolio and I plan to incorporate it into my future classroom one day too. My students and their families alike can also take advantage of it because I will upload lesson plans as well as a calendar or schedule for upcoming events. I also think that having a link to my blog will be another way to incorporate my classroom as well.

Becoming A Better Teacher Using Blogs

Being an elementary education major, I wasn't sure how beneficial blogging would be for such young learners. However, I have learned that blogs can be used in a variety of ways for any type of classroom setting. I still believe that how teachers will incorporate blogs into their lesson or classroom will depend on the age of their students because of different abilities to work on the computer or the internet. Either way, blogging should be taken advantage of in all grade levels because it is a great way to communicate with teacher, students, and parents. Students' work, accomplishments or goals can be shared, and other activities or events that are coming up in the future can be organized into a planner or calender. I want to teach lower elementary students, so I was most interested in how younger learners can use blogging in their learning process.

A website that I found most useful was at the teach clever website where they gave useful tips for teachers on blogs and how to become more organized. There were different tags you can click on such as technology, organization, productivity, classroom, etc. I enjoyed this because there were different posts from a variety of teachers on each of these tags, and I feel like I could really benefit from their ideas and what works or doesn't work in classrooms.

While searching for different teachers' blogs, I came across a kindergarten's class blog at class blog meister. I thought this was one of the most interesting class blogs because it was for such young learners. I didn't think that kindergartens would be able to use this type of technology. I assumed that the teacher was the only one who used the blog as a way to keep the parents' updated on their children, but I soon found out that the students still have ways of participating in this blog. They have a live button that you can click on the site and chat with the entire class if they are available. The blog also specified that it is used not only for the families in the classroom, but for other people around the world. This would be a great tool to communicate with a diverse group of people from different cultures to learn more about them. This blog also posted videos that the students were involved in, such as singing and showing their work. They did a project called "Voices of the World" and they learned a song called "May All Children" that is about bringing peace to all children. This song was very touching, and hearing all of the young students sing along with the music in the background was too precious to bear. This blog also had a list of every student in the class, and when you click on the individual names, their individual projects and work from class is shown. There was also a video of pictures with music playing in the background of students making their own gingerbread houses. I think this is a great way for students to see how important their learning is by showing off their work. I definitely think that this type of blogging proves that any age can be involved in technology! I definitely want to post my students' work in the future!