We had Rich McCue come in today and explain to us a how WordPress.com works and all the different features it has to offer. He discussed the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org which I had no idea they were two completely different platforms. Rich showed us how to make a wordpress.com site and how to host it on a Canadian server which is open etc. We had a chance to play around with our site, customizing the themes and playing around with the toolbar. I can view WordPress being a very useful application to blog about my experiences as a teacher which may be helpful for other teachers. This site would contain no personal information about students but rather the activities and lessons we do in our class. This way, parents are able to be informed about what their child is learning about and the different topics we cover in the classroom. Since OpenETC is a Canadian server, no information is stored outside the country ensuring that the information is being stored in a safer manner.

After we had a chance to make our own wordpress accounts to document our reflections and blogs for the EdTech class, we were introduced to Trello which is an online website that acts as your daily planner. This website has a section where you can insert your to-do list and categorize it in ways to show whether it’s in progress or is completed. This website is an amazing resource for a teacher because it allows them to visually see how a student is planning their assignments and studying for a particular class. The teacher can also go in and comment on the parts where the student may be excelling in or may need assistance with. I can picture myself using this website as an educator to monitor my student’s schedules to better provide them the antiquate learning they need. As an alternate to planners, Trello can be accessed online through many devices such as a smartphone and is portable so students don’t have to carry around an extra booklet to plan their work.