Introduction

Hello. My name is Colleen Hosick and I am a 5th grade teacher in Bellevue, NE at Leonard Lawrence Elementary School.  This blog will hopefully have several purposes.  One purpose will be for the parents and family members of my students to keep up-to-date with what we are learning and doing in class on a regular basis.  Another purpose will be for me to share lesson plan ideas, classroom management strategies, and other resources with fellow colleagues.  I plan to gain ideas and strategies from other teachers as well.

I have been teaching since 1999.  I graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha with my Elementary Education degree.  After teaching a year of 6th grade, I moved down to teach 5th grade and have been loving 5th grade ever since.  After my first year, I also decided to start a Masters degree program.  Two years later I graduated with my Masters in Technology in Education through Lesley University.  The tricky thing about technology, as we all know, is that it is constantly changing; getting better, and faster, and smaller, and soooo much cooler!  So although I have that Masters degree under my belt, I feel as though I constantly need to continue learning about the latest technology innovations.

I love learning about new websites, software, programs, gadgets and devices.  It is a challenge to keep up with them all and utilize them regularly, but it is my goal to bring what I learn into the classroom.  I am comfortable on a PC.  I think MACs are very cool, but I don't have one, therefore I'm a PC girl.  In my classroom I use the AV Rover Cart on a regular basis.  We use the Clickers about once a week, mostly for assessments.  I have a website that serves as a resource to parents.  They can access many informational documents that I give out at the beginning of the year and find out about upcoming events.  I also have websites and other resources that parents and students can use at home.  I try to share some of the students' work through the website as well. 

So hopefully this blog will succeed in serving the purposes I mentioned above.  I look forward to learning more about blogging and technology in general and sharing it with you!