Reflections

Reflections From a Non-Blogger

My name is Brenda Delmarter. I am a sixth grade Social Science teacher at West Orient Middle School in the Gresham/Barlow School District, located just 20 miles east of Portland, Oregon.

Last summer, I took my first on-line distant learning class using Photoshop Elements 7. Itwas a challenge for me, since I am technology challenged. With my husband's help, though, I designed a power point presentation to show to parents at the open house in September. They saw an overview of the course, "History Alive", a hands-0n approach to teaching ancient civilizations. The parents saw several images and some text.

I have several reasons why am interested in learning about blogging and using it in the classroom. The first reason is to keep up with my sixth grade team. I know that the sixth

grade language arts teachers have been blogging for at least two years. They keep encouraging

me to try it and have assured me it is quite easy! We'll see!

The second reason to learn how to blog is because one of my professional goals is to become more comfortable with technology and explore ways that it can be used in the classroom. I am really going out of my comfort zone when I try something new in this area.

The most important reason I would like to learn how to blog is so that I can post text and pictures of the wonderful activites that we do in social science. I gave my students a survey at the end of the year to get some feedback on their likes and dislikes. Overwhelmingly, the students prefered the dramas, skits, songs, and simulations over reading the textbook and working in the workbooks. My students "sailed" down the Nile River, were patricians overseeing the common people in an ancient Roman marble factory, and ran foot races as Greek athletes. I took pictures of my students, but only printed them out for display at the end of the year. I would love to be able to post them on my web site or on my blog frequently for my students and their parents to see what is happening in the classroom.

I am excited about this class and hope it will allow me to be a little more creative with how I keep families posted about the fun things we do in Social Science next year!