The Book Life

During my LIS 724 technology course this semester, my positive outlook on technology use in education has remained the same. I continue to think and know that technology can be used to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom when used with thoughtful planning. Now, after taking this class, my view of blogging, professional learning networks, and websites portfolios have expanded. Blogging Journey I have always been interested in blogging, but I did not know how to start. I am glad that this course forced me to start my blogging journey! I have enjoyed writing from a young age, and it is fun to have a writing outlet as an adult through blogging. I would like to use blogging in my future career, however, I am still pondering which path I will take.  Professional Learning Network (PLNs) I believe that expanding my professional learning network will always be beneficial for my career. I am delighted to have learned about Twitter chats in this class. Twitter chats are a gre...

Deep Dive I completed a deep dive data mine on myself over the last couple of days, and I knew that it would not be difficult to find information as I have an uncommon last name. Fussichen is a German word for little feet--at least that is what my family has recounted to me. My maiden name is Book, which is the Americanized version of the German word buch. According to my family history, two brothers (last name Buch) came to this country as mercenaries in the 1700's to fight for the Americans against the British in the Revolutionary War. Anyway, I was excited to view my permanent online presence or digital tattoo, and overall, I was pleased with what I saw.  Twitter While mining information about myself, I came across an old Twitter account that I created for my previous role as a middle school gifted teacher. The school district where I worked encouraged teachers to tweet about happenings in our classrooms. I am sure that teachers were asked to tweet to create positive public rela...

My First Twitter Chat! I found my first Twitter chat to be very exciting! At first I tried to join some Twitter chats, but they were not running so I was disappointed, and I was nervous that I would not find any chats to join. However, I discovered a Twitter chat called  #BuildHOPEedu   in my Twitter feed, and  the moderator for  #BuildHOPEedu   was Roman Nowak @NowakRo.  I joined  #BuildHOPEedu  pretty easily using Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck was helpful to keep the the tweets focused on the chat, but on the other hand, all of the columns were a bit distracting. Everyone on the chat was very kind, and I felt super happy when someone liked my tweet! (Author's Image) Mentor Teachers As you can see from the graphic below, the topic for the Twitter chat was about mentors for teachers. When I was a first year teacher in 2004, I did not have a formally assigned mentor, but I did find a mentor teacher on my own who helped me through my first year. In 2012 and ...

  Commuting No More! After working for the past 17 years as a teacher in other communities, I feel fortunate to now work at a school library in my own town and in the same school district where my two kids attend school. I am elated to have a seven minute commute rather than a 30 to 40 minute daily commute. It definitely reduces the stress and exhaustion in my life and allows more time to be with my boys after school. Maybe you can relate to my experience! GIPHY Universal Design Initiative In my current position in the school library, I am a part-time employee, so I am not required to attend faculty meetings or teacher institute days. However, I do know that my school district's new initiative is Universal Design for Learning, so I researched UDL to learn more about the initiative. Universal Design for Learning is a teaching methodology that meets the needs of all learners and removes learning barriers. UDL classrooms provide choices for students to demonstrate their learning, stud...

I’m very excited to discuss a hot topic in my household today: screen time! I have two sons ages 12 and 9, and they LOVE spending hours (if allowed) on their devices. My 12 year-old has a personal cell phone, laptop, iPad as well as a school issued Chromebook. My 12 year-old loves to play Minecraft, and I am happy that he has chosen this video game rather than other violent video games. I think that Minecraft can be an educational game, and vocabulary, logic, math, and collaboration skills can be learned from it. My son also enjoys watching videos on YouTube (the top platform choice for his age group according to Common Sense Media ) and falls into the video hole of watching videos for too long. In fact, he was happy last night when he accidentally blocked the YouTube app on his phone. Therefore, the fact that 32% of teens prefer YouTube over other platforms is not at all surprising to me. My 9 year old has a personal iPad and a school issued iPad. The boys share a Nintendo Switch. My ...