EDU 790 Introduction

Hi everyone! I'm Laura Walls. I love taking pictures, so I couldn't just share one. Below are four of my favorite current photos: 

Personal Photo

The past two and a half years have been very eventful in my life, especially since I got married in 2016! The picture at the top is my current profile picture on my Facebook account. It's one of my favorite pictures from my wedding. My husband (Nick) and I got married at St. Francis Xavier Church in LaGrange. I am a 6th-grade teacher at the parish's school. Since I have shared this picture before for other courses, I decided to share some other recent pictures that are also on my Facebook. I can't seem to get myself to change my profile picture! 

Personal Photo

 
This picture above is from my honeymoon. Nick and I love Disney World and had a great time when we went. I am actually going back soon with some of my close girlfriends for a long weekend. I can't wait!

Personal Photo

This third picture shows Nick and I at a wedding over the summer. Nick was the best man at his best friend's wedding. I tagged along with the bridal party when they took pictures at Dominican. I didn't know at the time that I would shortly be starting classes there!

Personal Photo

As for this last picture, it shows Nick and I on the day we purchased our first house. Over the past few months, we have worked hard at making our place feel like home. We love to decorate and went a little crazy with Christmas. We are currently getting some work done with our basement, and most our Christmas stuff is still up. I'll admit that I'm a little nervous about when I'm going to have the time to put it all away! As much as I love it all, I am looking forward to getting my house back to normal and all clean!

 Looking through these pictures just now on Facebook has made me reflect on how busy/eventful life has been lately. It's kind of nice to share these moments on Facebook because in a sense, it's like creating a traditional photo album to remember events and people. I love history and pictures, so storing all these in one location preserves my history with my friends and family and also organizes these images.

I am looking forward to this course. While I tend to be a private person, I feel that I have come along way with being more open to sharing with others via social media. I have definitely benefited from social media as teacher by gaining great ideas and resources from others. I am excited to learn more ways to use social media as an educator.

Check out the following to learn more about me:

Twitter (@lwalls776)

Professional Website

Social Media in the Classroom

Oftentimes when I think of social media, I usually think it's only referring to things like Facebook and Twitter. When I was reading a presentation about social media, I came across the following image. This image stood out to me and made me realize that other tools like Google Docs and Pinterest are also social media. I like how this image grouped these technology tools into different categories. So, the next time I am asked if I am interested in using social media in my classroom, I do not have to limit my thinking into just those two tools.

Social Media Map: Image Source

In order to gain ideas on how to use social media in the classroom, I read the following article entitled 22 Simple Examples of Social Media in the Classroom. On here, I learned the idea of having students create fake Facebook pages about a famous historical figure, and using Pinterest to pin student work to share with parents, etc. In addition to those, a classroom blog can be used in a writing class to have students interact with others, especially their classmates. I like finding resources like this that provide example ideas on ways I can use tools with my students and their families. If I use these tools in my personal life to communicate and collaborate with others, then it makes sense to use them professionally with my colleagues, students, and parents. Since the world is used to these tools, it will probably help them stay organized if all aspects of their life start using them, so all teachers need to start realizing that using these tools more will benefit their school.

I also read another article entitled What Would Abe Lincoln's Social Media Campaign Look Like? A New Classroom Use for Twitter and Facebook. I find it very interesting to look at how social media played a big role in political elections, and how things may have been different if social media was used in the past during Abraham Lincoln's time. This article explained how this topic could be turned into a lesson for students. I found the lesson to be a great idea and it definitely would  allow students to use many different higher-order thinking skills to collaborate and communicate. Within the lesson, students could use other technology tools like Recite to write quotes from historical figures and how those could have been used in a campaign. Awesome way to integrate social media into a lesson! It's something I don't think I would have come up with on my own. One just needs to be social in order to gain great ideas!