All About Me

My name is Olivia Owen and I am 24 years old.  I am from Lexington, Kentucky and I have three older sisters.  So yes, that makes me the youngest of four girls!  My parents still live in Lexington, but my sisters and I have all moved away from home.  My oldest sister is acting in Seattle, Washington, my second oldest sister is New Orleans, Louisiana working for the university, and my third oldest sister teaches high school social studies in Ashland, Kentucky.  Don’t worry; my parents are both teachers, too! 

                I have played soccer since I was four years old and soccer is what brought me to Owensboro.  I received a full-ride soccer scholarship to Brescia University and moved to Owensboro when I was eighteen.  I graduated Cum Laude in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education.  I began teaching fourth grade science and writing at Foust Elementary School in August 2006. 

 I currently finished my second season of coaching third and fourth grade girls’ soccer at Foust.  That was definitely a new experience for me, but I loved being able to teach them something outside of the classroom!  It was a whole new relationship that I developed with those students and I can’t wait to coach again next year and share my passion of soccer with them. 

In June of 2008, I began taking classes at Brescia University for my masters in curriculum and instruction.  I plan to graduate with my masters’ degree in the summer of 2010.  I love Owensboro and the school where I teach and plan to be here for a long time!  I can’t wait to see my students succeed and hope I am the kind of teacher they will visit after they leave my classroom! 

Professional Development

This is my third year of teaching and I have attended several professional developments.  Since portfolios are a huge part of fourth grade, most of my professional development activities have been centered on writing.   Every year I attend a professional development with the curriculum facilitator and receive training for transactive, personal expressive, and reflective writing.  The training provides resources for implementing instruction on writing into our classroom.

For this course, I will be using my laptop that has been assigned to me by Foust.  The internet connection from my house is high-speed DSL.  In my classroom, I have five computers with access to the internet that are hooked up to a printer in the room.  Students use the computers for science centers on a daily basis.  Also, I have a Smart Board that I use to show students information and demonstrations, but the students also interact with the Smart Board during science centers.  I have a camera projector that is used to show science experiments.  I recently received the Senteo software which includes remote control clickers to be used for student assessment.  I have not yet used this software, but am currently entering in student information.  Microsoft Outlook Express is the email provider at my school and this is the email account I use. 

I am taking this course to further my knowledge of technology and how to incorporate it into my classroom, in order to enhance and provide more effective instruction.  I expect to learn how to use a variety of software and how to teach my students to use this software, also.  I want to learn more technology skills other than how to use a computer and a Smart Board in order to introduce more skills to my students.