Google Communities in the Classroom
"Google + Communities" is an easy to use tool that allows experienced and new educators to spread ideas and to receive new ideas to update their classroom. This is an exciting app because it allows a very new teacher (like myself) to not be so alone with coming up with ideas, lesson plans, or classroom activities. When searching on Good+Communities, I did not find much under "Theatre Teacher Communities". I did find one, but it had no substance and was trying to sell their high school costume pieces. So using my problem solving skills, I followed two different worlds of communities. The first community I followed was Theatre. This provided me with an inside look to what is currently happening in the theatre world, asking questions, and an assortment of plays that I could learn about to possibly have my students perform at my high school. Another helpful thing about this community is that there are a lot of actors that post monologues for review. This could allow my students to visually see how a monologue is performed, they can point out what is right, what the person did wrong, and can give my students a place to find monologues they would like to perform. This community is where I got the picture "ALL DRAMA MUST REMAIN ON THE STAGE" provided by Theatre Community Member Gordon Firemark. Another board I followed is titled Shakespeare. This provides me with information and reviews of current and past Shakespeare performances. It gives details of A LOT of actors and actresses that are famous (like Benedict Cumberbatch) who are tackling Shakespeare. This sight also gives us access to a lot of monologues that my students could use for class that are from famous Shakespeare plays!
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Review of Benedict Cumberbatch performing in The National Theatre's "Hamlet" Provided by the Google+Community "Theatre".
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I also followed communities that just dealt with education. I followed Teachers Teaching Today, "A community of in-service and pre-service teachers engaged in the complexities of the modern K-12 classroom". This community has a lot of different tabs that go deeper into aspects of a high school classroom. For example, "Intrinsic Motivation" is a tab that gives teachers a place to post their classroom concerned and have solutions on how to motivate their students. There are also tabs that deal with "Assessment", "Learner Diversity", "Behavior and Self Regulatoin", and "Managing Modern Classrooms". This community will be extremely helpful for me as a new teacher in a year or two. Classes can't prepare you for everything in the real world, so having a place where I can go and post questions or look for inspiration, Google + Communities is perfect.
From "Teachers Teaching Today" Community member Letica De Leon