Netiquette

I found this article about "netiquette" very interesting. I have never even heard of this term but after reading this article, I believe it will soon be added to the dictionary right under internet. This term describes how you should behave and act online. Everyone should strive for a good netiquette. Kids need to be aware that you should not give out any personal information over the internet. Also when writing a formal email they should avoid "IM lingo" and caps lock. They should no that no email is ever really private and anything you post on the internet is there for everyone to see. I found it interesting that some schools are starting to implement classes about this netiquette. Hopefully the state or the national government will have some standards related to this class and make it required for every student. The internet is such a huge part of our lives that we need to know how to behave on it.

Art Range

Today in class I played with Art Range. This is a free program that is similar to paint. You can paint with different brush and different colors. You can also trace pictures and the program will automatically match the color of the drawing. You can also use stencil to draw simple pictures.
I found it neat that if you draw and red blob and paint blue on top of it, it will turn purple! This can be very useful in the classroom if you are teaching about colors. You can also use it as an enrichment tool and have students trace a picture of something they are learning about and then you can have them write about their picture. I also found Google Earth very interesting. It would come in handy as a introduction to a unit of study in Social Studies. You can use it to show geography and the different types of land and bodies of water. Back in my day, all we had was a globe to look at and that was a very boring an inaccurate picture of the world!! Now, my future students will have the opportunity to see a birds eye view of any spot they can possibly think of! I plan to use these two programs as much as possible and I am sure my students will love them.

Classroom Newsletter

This is my Classroom news letter. Click on the picture to make it full screen!