Digital Blog Post #D

The concept "Electronic Communication Between Teachers and Students" in chapter 8 is clearly targeting the electronic communication with students, but since my focus is to teach kindergarten I feel they will not benefit from this. Instead I will use this concept for communicating with my students parents. Of course I will use traditional email and text messaging for quick and more personal communication. I like the idea of classroom websites to post announcements and class schedule as well as student work. This is a great way to keep parents involved in what is going on in their child's classroom. I am familiar with discussion boards since we use them for homework assignments. I never thought of them as a way to keep communication. I would like to use discussion boards and a blog as an option for all the parents to communicate together and share their ideas and even concerns they may have with me. 

"Social Networking for Educators" in chapter 8 was a new concept to me. You hear a lot of negative things about social media in the news, but educational networking is so different. The text book introduces an online service called Ning. With this service teachers can have discussions and exchange research, curriculum ideas, and other personal experiences they've had in the classroom with other teachers anywhere in the world. I think this is a great way to learn especially in my first couple years of teaching I think I will benefit from this a lot. I look forward to participating in educational networking.

The United States today is full of so many languages and culturally. That is why the concept "Multicultural Education in 21st Century Schools" in chapter 10 is so important. Racism and stereotypes are common in schools and it is a teachers job to educate students about each other and create a community within the classroom. One way to do that is teaching methods and approaches. Do group projects and put students of different cultures together or participation as a class in discussions. Also create a culturally relevant curriculum by including  cultural historical stories about ethnic heroes. I think it is very important for students to learn about each other and not feel left out. I will definitely implement multicultural education in my future classroom. 

Case, Abbi. (2013, February 26 ). The 5 Dimensions of Multicultural Education. Youtube. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bBb8Nk8Mvs

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.