It's been a long time coming...

When I started this blog, back in 2011... yup, WAY back in the day, I didn't put much thought into my blog title. To be honest, this blog was supposed to just be a way for me to reflect on my teaching and digitally document some of the things I was doing in my classroom for evaluation purposes.

 Little did I know all those years ago how important this blog would truly become to my growth as a reflective educator. Who would have thought that others were actually interested in what I had to share and had questions about what I was sharing. I have built some fantastic connections with educators from around the world, in part, because of this simple little blog. It's nothing fancy~I haven't paid big dollars to have someone create a template, it's just been 'lil ole me playing around with the settings to create what I like (boy have I screwed things up and learned a lot from all the experimentation) Plain and simple, this blog has simply been a labor of love.

With all good things though, sometimes we need to reframe, rebuild, or remodel and that's where I am at after all these years. For several years now I've wanted to redo the look of the blog and change the name, but the inspiration, creative juices and TIME just weren't there. ( the red, traditional, teacher and apple motif just wasn't cutting it!) This summer though, much has happened and I am entering a new chapter in my career as an Elementary Digital Learning Specialist. This change prompted me to find the time to update the blog and after a lot of reflection, I even came up with a new name. The purpose and target audience of this blog has twisted and turned and turned like the bends in a river over the years but the main theme has always revolved around digital innovation so it seemed fitting to me to re-title the blog, 

"Digital Meanderings"

I'm excited about the new look, title, and general feel of the blog and am excited to continue sharing what I learn as I make this transition to my new position! 

Here's looking forward to another 5 years of connected learning!

100th Day

 It's the 100th day... well almost, but I'm gearing up. This year I am going to try and embed a little bit more technology into our day.

One of the activities we will be utilizing is commenting on our classroom blog. After my previous ramblings and networking with a couple of other 1st grade teachers on my PLN (Thanks Laurie, from MorningSunFirstGrade), I am in the process of investigating and setting up a KidBlog but it won't quite be ready by Tuesday, so we're going to leave our responses as comments on our classroom blog, The Dog Blog. My question for them is simply, "What did you like best about the 100th day?" Not very creative, but I want something simple that they can be successful with , especially since I will have 6 kiddos from another class joining us during this time that are not familiar with our blog.

I also plan to use the awesome SMARTboard lesson that I bought last year from Smart Lesson Stop called Hip, Hip, Hooray It's the 100th Day! If you haven't checked out their site, it's worth the trip. Lots of great, well made SMARTboard lessons all for the low price of $2.50. I love making my own files, but sometimes it's nice to find something different to mix it up a bit.

This page of the file has kids highlight 2 numbers on the interactive hundred grid and then find the difference. This ties in well with our math lesson as we just finished learning about differences. I plan to use this page in a little bit different way as well. I bought 100 Pixie Sticks for my kiddos and numbered each one of them. (shhhh... they don't know yet so if you're reading this, don't tell them!) I plan to hide them around the room during lunch on Tuesday and then we'll have a scavenger hunt to find them all. As we find them, the kids will need to bring me the Pixie Stick and flip the number on the hundred grid that they found. This will be great for a couple of my kiddos that still need help locating numbers on the number grid, and for the rest of us, a little bit of fun.

Looking for some other great ideas for your 100th day? Check out this website, Technology Rocks, Seriously.  Always some great sites and ideas to check out here!

Happy 100th Day!