“NECC 2008 Session 9 – Live Blog”
Howdy! I teach sixth grade at an elementary school in Sacramento, CA. I started my career in Oakland, Ca, and moved here to Sacramento in 2001.
My goals are:
- To reflect on how I am teaching, and how effective my practices are;
- To integrate and embed technology in the curriculum I teach; and,
- To network with other like-minded educators.
To help me reach my goals, I use this blog as a place for me to reflect on best practices, and the practices I’m (trying to) putting in place in my classroom.
My philosophy of teaching is pragmatic (I’ll use what works, and I’m not particularly wed to one theory or another). I want students thinking critically, and engaged in what they are learning (Constructivism), but I know that many of my students (language learners and others) need schema, scaffolding, and explicit modeling, so I’m not afraid to use those as well.
My philosophy of technology education is that teaching comes first, but technology is an awesome tool to use to engage students, and help them create stuff. I prefer that the learning goal guide the use of technology, and not the other way around.
That’s the big picture. Other salient details are that I can be sharp, but I prefer to see the positive and connect with others rather than fighting and argufying. I can be hard on others (having high expectations), but no harder than I am on myself.
I can be contacted here.





It was interesting reading what happened in this session from your perspective. You did a good job. I think I’ll try doing this at a future conference.
Have you heard of a website called Into the Book (http://reading.ecb.org/)? I found about that at a session earlier in the day. I prefer it to ReadWriteThink. Although I like RWT’s activities better – they’re more open-ended – they’re in bad need of an update. Students can’t save their work for another time? There’s no (easy) way to export it other than printing?