Thing 3

In today's society, being able to use the internet effectively is essential. Almost every profession, including being a teacher, requires that you be able to use the internet. Nowadays, we use internet in our every day lives and for many different reasons.

In schools today students are also required to use computers, internet and technology. More and more schools are making it required for students to have access to a computer to turn in homework or to do projects, essays and things like that. The older you get the more technology you are required to use in schools.

By using technology, this gives teachers a more wide variety of activities and projects they can use to interact with their students. Blogs are one of these resources that teachers can use. By making a blog you can develop one place to hold different things that can be useful to your students.

For me, I want to become a French teacher, and I could use a blog for a place to hold different links for students to be able to access that may help them with their French. It can be a place where I can update class news or news in general. I can also post videos that can help students learn or French movies, TV shows, or music. Videos are a good form of interaction especially for foreign languages because hearing the language being spoke is necessary for the student to learn.

Blogs can be very interactive if used in the right way and most teachers want this interaction with their students. It assures them that their students are learning and actually care about learning their subject. Blogs help the students to interact because they have to watch the videos, read the posts and comment. Plus, blogs are a lot more interesting and personal than a school website. This will encourage the students to actually go onto the blog, check it out, and interact.

Overall, I think that blogs are a good way for teachers to introduce their students to the internet and to help them become more involved in class and to ultimately learn more and have a fun time doing it. Remember, if students are having fun learning your subject then they're apt to learn more. ^-^

"Thing 2 would like to clarify that just because he wears the number 2 does not imply in any way that he's inferior to Thing 1."

"He says you may feel free to call him Thing A if you like. He will also accept Super Thing, Thing King, Kid Dynamite, Chocolate Thun-da or Ben."

I want to start off with a little bit about me to answer these questions for "Thing 2". My name is Lacy May Jack. I am a junior here at Austin Peay State University. I am majoring in French with a double minor in Creative Writing and Education. I hope to become a French teacher but that's not all I aspire to do in life.

This is not my first blog. I've worked with other blogs for various reasons. I like reading and writing. The genre that I read and write most in is paranormal romances (NOT A TWILIGHT FAN!) and I hope to become a successful paranormal romance writer in the near future.

My posting names are simple and get the point across. This is Thing 2 so therefore the name: Thing 2. I named it Lacy Jack's 3040 Blog because it's easy to remember and signifies that this is for the Education 3040 class, just in case I have to do something like this for another class, I'll remember which one is which easily. Plus, names of blogs and their web addresses can be changed so it's not a big deal what I name it. And since this blog is for work not pleasure writing, I didn't feel the need to go all crazy on the names and such.

Blogger is a fairly easy blog to use, even for people who have never used technology/blogs before. The same can be said for the doppleme avatars. It's all pretty self explanatory. The avatar that I created looks a little like me. There's not many creative options for the avatars so we're sort of limited. I gave it long red hair like myself and a stack of books, because I love books, and I gave it a beret not because I wear them but because I thought it could signify that I'm a French major.

My little brother and I 

Anyways, I look forward to working on this blog because it gives me an interesting way to practice writing and something to write about. I also look forward to seeing what others come with also.

Note: Just a heads up to anyone who reads my posts, I like to incorporate pictures into my posts. I find that this makes posts a bit more interesting and pulls people in, makes them want to read what you have to say and helps your blog look more attractive because it breaks your blog into sections. Readers find it discouraging when they see a ton of words and no breaks for their eyes. :)

"Thing 1 says he's Thing 1 for a reason and some people should just get used to it. It's a Thing thing, you wouldn't understand."

Okay, so I viewed the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners. After contemplating the different habits, I think that the hardest one for me is the Habit #4: Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner. This one seems harder for me than the rest because I've never been all that confident in myself and it's hard for me to think of myself as competent because I often compare myself to others. I want to be the best at what I do but it gets me down when I notice people in my class doing better than me. Though this becomes some what of a problem, it also helps me. It makes me more competitive and struggle to be the best that I can be.

The easiest one for me, would be Habit#7: Teach/mentor others. I have a teaching and motherly nature. I like to nurture others and help them. I often correct people without thinking (sorry to those who hate Grammar Nazi's) and always want the best for others, which is probably why I decided on becoming a teacher.

As for my experience with Web 2.0 tools, I think it's fairly easy. I have used blogger before and technology usually comes fairly easy to me so I'm not worried about any of it.

Overall, I agree that all of these habits of Lifelong Learners are good to have and help people become better learners and in effect, help them become better teachers. You have to learn before you can teach. I hope everyone else had an easy time with blogger as well. :)