Activity 1: Creating a Blog

          My name is Liz. I have been a teacher for 13 years. I taught first grade for three years, transitioned to third grade for five years and back then first grade for four years. This school year, I took on a new, exciting challenge as an elementary technology teacher for K-5 because of my passion for technology.  

          While teaching third grade and doing research projects with the students, I had given them a paper copy of a list of sites that they could visit to find information. This turned into a lot of time wasted typing in the web addresses in addition to missing a letter and it taking them to sites unknown. This process was frustrating for me, as a teacher, and I worried about the safety and security of the sites that students may come across in one of the potential mishaps. This prompted me to develop a website. I searched for a site that hosted websites for free and was also easy to use. I could not find what I was looking for, so I ended up using a subscription based site. The site I used was relatively easy to setup with drag and drop features. I was able to "fancy" it up using HTML code, this was my first experience reading and writing in HTML. By developing the website, it made a quick and easy way for my students and me to access websites quickly.  I also used it to link the many resources that I used in my teaching on a daily basis.

          When I transferred back to first grade, I needed a new website for first-grade materials; it was at that time that I found Weebly.com which is a free web hosting site as long as your web address has the .weebly.com following your domain name.   If you would like a dedicated domain name, there is a yearly fee. There are also features available if you choose to upgrade to a premium membership, but for my purposes, I have not found necessary. Weebly has many great templates and is very easy to use! Within the website, they have blogging, the ability add apps, and marketing features. My first-grade website is www.russellfirstgrade.weebly.com.  A subpage under the Home tab is two blog sites that I used to showcase student work and share pictures with the parents.  

          When I accepted the computer lab teacher position, I created another new website www.russelllab.weebly.com. This site houses the lessons and links to websites that I assign my kindergarten-fifth grade students. Many of the assignments are completed in Google Classroom, which uses Google Docs, Sheets or Slides for the lesson activity. As the year has progressed, I have found many things that I will add or change for next year.  It is my passion to be a life-long learner and to share the things I have learned with the curious student minds that I have the privilege to work with each year.