C4T #2

For this C4T assignment, I was given Mrs. Elvira Deyamport’s blog, Language Journeys. She is a Gifted Education teacher for grades 2-6. I highly suggest that you look over her blog. It contains a lot of excellent material.

Comment #1

My first comment was on her blog post, Telling Our Stories with Social Media. She starts out by sharing Diigo . Diigo is an amazing social bookmarking tool. She provides a very nifty link for a list of Diigo resources.

Mrs. Deyamport recently attend MECA, which is her state’s educational technology conference. She tells us about Eric Sheniger, who she describes as her social media hero. She continues to say that “he is the example of how school leaders can utilize social media to tell our stories and implement effective change within schools”. I have already bookmarked his web page.

Showcasing the work of her students is only part of what Mrs. Deyamport is trying to achieve. She also wants to show the world what is actually done in gifted education. When I commented, I introduced myself and thanked her for sharing Diigo. I told her that I found it very useful, and couldn’t wait to share it as well. Seriously, check out Diigo here. I also told her that I admired her approach and thought this was a good way to inspire a sense of pride and accomplishment. I ended my comment by asking if she had any other tool she could suggest. I am happy to say that Mrs. Deyamport replied to my comment almost immediately. She suggested I look into a site called Edmodo, and let me just say, wow! This will definitely be something I incorporate into my classroom. For the sake of space, I won’t go into detail, but this video is short, precise, and very informative. I’m not sure if this is something we will discover in EDM 310, but we should. I highly recommend it, on good recommendation.


Comment #2

My second comment was on Mrs. Deyamport’s post, Talking About College with Gifted Kids. In this blog, she describes the way she approach talking about college with her gifted students. She used three different projects to help them.

The first project she used was “text self-portraits”. The students were asked to draw a portrait of themselves using words that describe their personal qualities, aspirations, interests, talents, and career goals. She posted a picture of one that was incredible. Here is an example of what I mean.:



The second project she used was “Career Trees”. This is exactly like a “text self-portrait”, only the image used to display their message is a tree, or something other than their faces. She also posted a picture of one of these. Although not a very good one, here is an example:



The third project they worked on was podcasts. Her students created podcasts in the form of talk shows to help provide collegiate information. One of the podcasts was like radio show called The Do’s and Don’t’s of College, and the other provided more specific information for UAB college.

When I commented, I told Mrs. Deyamport that I loved this post, and enjoyed the podcasts so much that I had to share with everyone in my office. I told her that I really enjoy the things she posts on her blog and plan to do these projects with my students in the future. I mentioned that after I post this, my obligation to comment and follow her blog would be fulfilled, but that I plan to continue to follow anyway in hopes of taking advantage of anything I may find valuable from her blog.