Blog Journal 7

• When I explored the Naples Park Elementary School website, I noticed that it provides a welcoming and organized layout for families to learn about the school and its classrooms. The site includes sections like “Our School,” “Parents,” and “Staff,” which link to pages where you can find teacher names, grade levels, and email contacts. Some teachers have class pages that introduce their subjects or grade, share weekly newsletters, or post reminders for upcoming events. The website also highlights school-wide updates, lunch menus, and important resources like the student handbook. However, more detailed classroom materials, such as assignments or student grades, are likely kept private and accessible only through secure logins for students and parents. Overall, the site serves as a helpful way for families to stay informed and connected to what’s happening at the school.

• In my future classroom, I envision using technology to make my work more efficient and to help students stay engaged and organized. I plan to maintain a class website where families can easily find updates, resources, information about me and the class, and important announcements. I will also create monthly newsletters using Microsoft Word and Canva to share what students are learning and to highlight upcoming events. For classroom collaboration, I want to use Padlet because it allows students to post their ideas or reflections in a shared space, encouraging participation from everyone. I’ll also use Diigo because it helps students annotate passages and share their thoughts while reading online texts. These tools will help me stay organized, communicate clearly with families, and make learning more interactive and accessible for my students.

• While working on Assignment 2: Critical Evaluation, using Canvas group, I noticed a few new helpful digital resources. As for lesson planning, AI can effectively help teachers by offering ideas to improve a pre-made lesson plan, or requesting ideas for engaging in-class activities to add to the lesson plan. Though, AI did a decent job at creating an organized lesson plan, a human making it would allow their expertise to effectively time out the class, and include the teaching styles that seem to work best to accommodate all students in that specific class. Through this assignment, I learned that a good lesson plan includes the lesson objectives, and a timed out lesson from start to finish, allowing enough time for interactive activities related to the lesson as well as an entrance and exit ticket or review. Evaluating the AI-generated lesson plan made me realize what I should include in my lesson plans, ensuring to make it cohesive and apply to all student's learning abilities. Overall, I enjoyed using the Canvas group tool to collaborate on this assignment, though it became difficult if multiple group members were editing the same page at the same time.