C4K February

In the month of February, I was given the opportunity to communicate with a student from Nebraska and a student from Canada. Both of the children I was assigned were in elementary school, but had written blog entries that were very impressive for their ages.

The first student I had was Cooper C. from Mrs. Geldes class in Nebraska. Cooper had created a PowerPoint presentation about how to add fractions, this was my comment: "My name is Catherine Stalvey and I am studying to be an elementary school teacher at the University of South Alabama. I am 20 years old and I am so excited to finish school in two years! I have never been to Nebraska before, but I am sure that it is a lovely state! I am very impressed with your math skills, because fractions have always been difficult for me. I just took a math class at my school where I had to learn about fractions all over again, and I couldn't remember anything. Please always remember how to do these things, especially if you want to be a teacher one day, because it will help you out a lot to already know what you're doing. I also really like the way you set up this post! The pictures are the perfect size for someone to read without any difficulty, and you made your directions simple enough for anyone to learn. One of the things I want to do when I am a teacher is to make sure that my students enjoy learning, and that they will remember how much they loved being in my class. I hope you are doing great in school and I hope you always love to learn! If you would like to respond to me, your teacher is free to email me at cdstalvey@gmail.com, or she can tweet me on Twitter @cd_stalvey. I began following her on Twitter this morning!" I actually tweeted his teacher that same day and had her tweet me back about how excited she was to read my comment.

My third C4K was the same child, Cooper C. from Nebraska. This time, he posted about his birthsone and what he thought about it and how cool it was to discover what your birthstone is. Here is my comment"Hi Cooper! Catherine here, again. I hope you and all your friends have been safe in this crazy cold weather. I think it is so cool that your birthstone is Opal, because I love that color! I have always wanted a piece of jewelry with that color stone in it. My birthstone is Topaz-my birthday is November 11. I was born on Veteran’s Day and my mom’s birthday is actually 3 days after mine, so when I was born she got to bring me home on her birthday. Cool, huh? Is your birthday on a holiday? If you could pick any other birthstone to have, what would it be? Mine would actually be Opal! Hope to hear from you soon!"

My seond C4K student was Kaija from Canada. This little girl had some spunk! All of her posts were full of energy and excitement. The post I commented on was about why tigers and lions are her favorite animals...although I wish I had commented on one of her many posts about how much she loves Minecraft. Here is my comment"Hi Kaija! My name is Catherine Stalvey and I am in my third year of college at the University of South Alabama, in southern Alabama, here in the United States. I think it is so cool that you live in Canada! It must be really cold there-I have never experienced really cold weather, because it usually does not get very chilly this far south. Have you ever been in the United States? I think that tigers and lions are so cute, too! I have a pet golden retriever named Murphy and sometimes his face looks a little bit like a lion, so his nickname has become "the friendly lion". Tigers are awesome, as well! Have you ever seen a white tiger? Those are crazy beautiful! In your sentence that says "It would be cool too Rome in the woods...", I believe that is so true! This looks like a silly thing that autocorrect did on an iPad, but "Rome" is a city in Italy and the correct spelling for what you were saying would be "roam", and "too" should be "to". You writing skills are so incredible for someone your age, and you seem so excited about learning! I mess up with my writing a lot, because sometimes I just forget how to spell stuff. It happens to everyone! Good luck with the rest of this year in school! Tell your teacher and your friends in class that I said "hello!"

I really enjoyed all of the posts I read by these two students, and I actually plan to keep up with their posts in the future as well! I think it so fun to see how other educators around the world are influencing the lives of children in such a positive way via technology.