Part 1 of C4K #10

I never knew I could learn so much in one place. Exploring Mrs. Yollis' blog was a lot of fun and I could have spent hours upon hours looking through all her post and tabs and still discover new things. Mrs.Yollis has been teaching for 25 years and has a masters in Integrating Technology in the Classroom. She also loves to travel and in the summer of 2010 she spent 3 days at Google learning how to use things like google maps and google earth in the classroom. On the last day she spent some time with National Geographic and learned about a program they have called the Giant Traveling Maps. They are giant maps of all the continents that can be rented out by schools to use for learning. I watched the video of Mrs. Yollis' class exploring the map of North America. It looked like so much fun I wish I could have been there to experience it! The bloggers on Mrs. Yollis blog are third graders who live in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Mrs. Yollis also has a classroom website which has links to different sites and resources valuable to student learning. She invites parents to explore the sites with the students and monitor them while on the internet. She also ask them to let her know if they have anything to add to the webpage. There is a link at the top of her blog that goes to a wiki she created to help educate teachers who want to create classroom blogs. In this wiki she also states one of the reasons she created her blog, "Having the classroom blog is like having Open House all year long." Parents can see their child's work all year long instead of just at open house. This allows parents to be more involved in the learning process of students." She also says that, "Students learn about geography by tracking our visitors and sharing comments with our blogging friends. Skyping with blogging buddies brings geography to life!" There are so many benefits of having a classroom blog and those are just a few. In the right hand column of the blog you can find a list of about 20 educational blogs her class follows. There is also the map that tells how many visitors their blog has had. They have had 72,060 visitors about 20,000 more than EDM 310 and their blog count only began a few days before ours.I think that their blog count is higher because they have more of an audience to view their work and they also interact with blogs and students from around the world that in return come and visit Mrs. Yollis' blog. Her class also takes part in a blog titled Our World, Our Stories that connects students from 3 different continents and 6 different countries. Through exploring some post on her blog I learned that November is family blogging month and that Mrs. Yollis' blog just had its 3rd birthday on November 6th. She also keeps a blog titled Yollis' 365 Project which is a daily digital documentation. Her class also uses skype to interact with other students and people from around the world.
Mrs. Yollis' blog shows how learning can take place through blogging and exploring. Learning can be fun and exciting and is not just limited to the pages of a textbook or even the walls of your classroom. She has put together a blogging environment that connects students to an endless amount of resources, and to other students and environments from around the world. She also connects parents to students work by having them be able to comment on students blog posts. Students and blogs from around the world are connected to her blog. She also gives back to the teaching community by offering resources for those teachers who wish to create a blog for their classroom and it an exceptional model for teachers to follow.