Keeping Families Informed

A couple of weeks ago, my school district had a professional development all about technology. Many of my colleagues were telling me that most professional developments in the past have been a waste of time and just not very useful. So, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this session was quite unlike the sessions from the past. We had a fantastic speaker, Steve Dembo, from Discovery Education. His life is technology, specifically technology in education but also in his family. He showed us multiple ways that his young child is using education in his every day life. Just doing a quick google search of Mr. Dembo shows how he takes advantage of every technology tool available. 


My favorite tool about which Steve Dembo told us was a different blogging website, posterous.com. This blog site is especially easy to use because of it's email-to-post feature. If you are fortunate enough to have an iphone, ipad, or other such tablet device, you can immediately transfer videos/pictures straight from your device to your blog. Sending a quick email with the attached picture and whatever you want to say in your post will automatically update your blog. I am fortunate to have an ipad at school but I've been struggling to figure out how to incorporate the use of one ipad into my class of 20+ students. I've been able to use the ipad when I do stations because then it allows only 4 students to work with it at a time, which is much easier for sharing purposes. However, now I use the ipad every day. (Granted, it's me that is using the ipad and not the students which is still something I am working on. However, this is a start for at least someone putting the ipad to good use.) I take pictures and videos of activities in my classes and immediately upload them to my blog spanishatlbes.posterous.com. This blog is for parents and families of my students and I included its url in the trimester newsletter I recently sent home. I wasn't sure how many people would view the blog, but each post has an average number of about 65 views. I'm so pleased with this result! I hope to create a blog for each of my future classrooms because it is a great and easy way to keep families informed about what is going on in the classroom.