Back to the Brick and Mortar

Posted by dlaughey on March 21st, 2008 filed in Questions

Hi-

I am a HS English teacher for a large Virtual School and I teach from home. I am returning to the brick and mortar school for several reasons. The local salaries are better, I miss face-to-face interaction with students, and the environment is quite corporate. I miss the autonomy of creating curriculum. Working from home can be very lonely and podcasts (fascinating and informative) talk at me, not with me. I do some live teaching with Elluminate but it is mostly grading and calling. I have procured a great job starting in August but do not yet know my schedule. My Virtual School job entails me to stay within the course and its tools. My year has wound down so I have the luxury of 4 months to think about this. Here is my challenge (and it is exciting). So, Teachers 2.0, what would you bring into the classroom with you. My first task is to make this journey into a blog. Which blog site is best for me? The teachers in the district I will be joining use Typepad. Should I sign up for a free blog there or go elsewhere? Thanks for your help. New to Twitter. dlaughey


3 Responses to “Back to the Brick and Mortar”

  1. Aaron Smith Says:
    March 21st, 2008 at 8:49 am

    While I have very little experience with Typepad, I don’t recall people who use it complaining about its features. Add to that the fact that Typepad seems to be the standard in your new district and I think that would be the best choice for you.

    Now if you choose to have your students blog as well, My first pick would be classblogmeister.com if for no other reasons than it’s free and has good monitoring controls.

  2. LindaH Says:
    March 21st, 2008 at 9:12 am

    If the other teachers use Typepad then that’s the place to start, though personally I prefer Wordpress as a blogging platform. For students I’d go for either Aaron’s choice or edublogs as there’s a strong community building up there and lots of advice & help for classroom blogging.
    Other Web2.0 tools I’d take into the classroom include google reader (to keep up with rss) also google docs and spreadsheets, wikispaces, and flickr.

  3. mrsdurff Says:
    March 21st, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    Pick the one you like.

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