Beginning a New Education Blog

I've always enjoyed following other people's education blogs.  However, the only blog I've created was for my parents to view pictures of their children at school and read about what they are doing in the classroom.  It was a great way to stay in contact with my student's families.  Throughout the years, several parents gushed over the fact that their child's grandparents from other states could see their grandchildren at special events at school that they would otherwise miss.

I hope to use my new classroom blog to share some of my ideas and resources that I use in my classroom with other educators.  I wanted to share a list of 4 of my favorite blogs that I frequently visit for new ideas and resources:

1. Step Into 2nd Grade with Amy Lemons
2. The Moffatt Girls
3. First Grade Made 
4. Cool Cat Teacher Blog

Even More Resources for Educators

Do you follow a ton of websites?  Do you find it time-consuming checking each individual website for updates?  Then, you should try Feedly!  It's an RSS feed reader.  Tell Feedly the websites you want to follow, and they will send you the updates.  Here's a screenshot of my Feedly:

 To make your Feedly look more organized, you can create different categories.  For example, I created a category called educational resources.

As my Feedly grows, I plan on creating more categories.  I am very excited to have all of my resources in one place!  It will be much more efficient.

Just this week, I also learned about a new free resource called Adobe Spark.  This resource provides three different types of content.  The first type of content is a post.  I created a post with an inspirational quote this week.  I was able to choose a picture from Adobe Spark.  I could have also added my own picture.  Then, I chose the size I wanted and added a text box to the picture.  Here's the finished project:

Posts are particularly great for social media.  Besides inspirational quotes, you can create invitations, memes, announcements, etc.  I think many elementary students would really like creating a meme!
Another type of content on Adobe Spark is a page.  Students could create a page that tells a story with both pictures and words.  They could also make a book report.  It would make an excellent presentation that students could share with the class.  The final type of content is a video.  Students can start from scratch or use templates.  They can create a presentation with both audio and video.  In the video below, a teacher explains how she used Abobe Spark video content in her 4th-grade classroom:

 I hope these resources will be beneficial for other educators and "spark" some creativity into the classroom.  :-)