Assignment 2- School District Website

After searching a few school district websites, I was really pleased with the overall feeling I got from the Haledon School District site.  The opening home page showcased the students in a slideshow which depicted them in various activities, such as concerts, plays, commutinty service and a graduation ceremony.  It was a great display of the overall feeling and character of the school district. It was colorful, cheery and very inviting.

Aesthetically, the site is very well organized and balanced, with easy to find tabs for students, teacher and parents.  The site made it very easy for parents to access the latest news and updates from their child's school.  The informtion included everything from PTA meetings to sports schedules.  Most importantly, it had webpages for each faculty member, which had the teacher's information as well as updates on assingments and links to resourseful websites pertaining to that particular subject. 

The student link was my favorite.  The students are a click away from educational brainteaser sites to the school's library media center.  They have quick links to museums and resources from around the world, as well as reference resources which they can access from home. Overall, Haldon School District really makes it a point to to involve their students in the new way of using technology, which will be such a benefit to them as they move through school and life.

Week 1

So, this is my first time ever setting up a Blog, and I was a little hesitant at first but realized quickly that it was quite simple.  I would say my background using technology is limited to the basics.  High School is when I first became familiar with the Internet and began using it a s a resource to collect information.  As I went on to college, using technology became a little more important, in that communicating with professors and students was crucial, especially for group projects, where getting together is almost always impossible.  Today, using Smartphones and social networking keeps the information at your fingertips at all times, the latest news, emails and the web.  Although I am cautious about social networking sites like Facebook, I do find other sites such as LinkedIn to be very useful in networking for my job as well as connecting with previous classmates and professors.  In today's economy it is always useful to have a strong network which you can rely on to generate more business.  I'm hoping that this class can help me broaden my knowledge of technology and open my mind up to new ways of using this tool.

One great way of using technology as a tool was demonstrated in the article "Four Takes on Technology".  There were some interesting ways that technology was used to not only better the students but the teachers as well.  In Students Teaching Teachers by Hsueh-Hua Chuang and Ann Thompson, they describe how the students take the GenYES course to learn valuable skills which they turn around and mentor their teachers.  The students create a video embedded power point project, which allows the students to gather the research from various places, analyze it and produce a new useful tool to teach others. This is a great tool and one that I relate to very well.  Being an artist, it is very useful to quickly watch a YouTube video which demonstrates a technique in minutes and can be applied immediately.  As a visual person, it is much easier for me to see the step by step process of a technique instead of reading about it.

I have made it through my first blog and am excited to learn new ways to improve my technology background. I'm hoping this class can not only improve my skills but help me understand how to use technology as a tool for more future students.

-Emilia