Emotional Literacy/Scrapblog Reflection

When I was first introduced to this project at the beginning of this semester, I have to admit I was very overwhelmed. I thought this project was going to be very time confusing and I was unsure how to approach it. I'd never used a lot of the technology that was listed to complete this project. When we were going over the different ways to use technology for this project, I had no idea where to begin. I also didn't realize how many different types of literacy there was. This project definitely opened my eyes to the different types of literacy and learning methods.

However, as I focused on one type of literacy and then picked the most interesting technology on the list, things began to get easier. I chose emotional literacy because that was the topic that I was interested in the most and I wanted to see how it impacted learning. I chose the scrapblog because it reminded me of a hobby I love to do...scrapbooking! When I made my username and password, I started playing around with the scrapblog and found it difficult to stop! I was having so much fun figuring out creative ways to decorate my scrapblog and catch the viewer's attention. It was just like scrapbooking except if you made errors it was easier to fix and a scrapblog is way less expensive! How cool.

Because this scrapblog is so easily accessible for children and super easy to use, I figured it was a great form of technology for children. I can definitely see children using this in the classroom for a research project or any kind of project for that matter. A scrapblog is great for students to display something they've learned in an appealing way.

As I began putting my pages together, I really had to research the definition of emotional literacy and the variety of ways to illustrate emotional literacy. I never realized just how important emotional literacy is in the classroom and life in general! Emotions influence our thoughts and actions and affect our bodies and impact our relationships. Because emotions have everything to do with how we process information, we as future teachers need to be well aware of the importance of emotional literacy. Humans are social beings and need to feel comfortable in their surroundings. Emotional literacy plays an important role on all individuals. It is important to understand just how important this is as teachers and be able to implement it in our future classroom.

I feel that scrapblogs and other forms of technology this project had to offer should be used in classrooms. I can see many ways that children can benefit from them and ways that teachers can really engage their students. With how technology is growing more and more everyday, it's important for us as teachers to be aware of this growth and use it in our classrooms to keep students informed and interested. Every individual would benefit from using these different technologies.