Blog 1

I am Brandi Lantz.  I hope to teach kindergarten in the near future.  I am currently an elementary education major student at Buena Vista University.  I live in Charles City with my husband and our five kids.  I started my teaching degree right after high school but then took a break from it. I love helping my kids in any way possible and believe that will translate into the classroom for me.

In kindergarten, we are setting the foundation for our students to have success in their schooling.  Can IXL help? For those that have used it, the answer is YES! Unfortunately, there are people who are against using technology in teaching, especially at a young age, but I think we need to help our students in any way that we can.  Those people think that we need to stick to the old ways of pen and paper.  IXL (pronounced I excel) is a fun and interactive tech tool that kids are drawn to use.  In the classroom, having kids want to do something is so important.  With IXL they feel like they are playing a game but they are learning and practicing their skills at the same time. 

IXL offers so many different lessons that will fit into the theme of what we are working on in the classroom.  There are levels from preschool all the way through high school.  I believe that using this program will engage the students at a level that we cannot reach in any other way.  Technology is so prevalent in society that it would be silly to not incorporate it into the classroom.  I found it so interesting and surprising that this program is so easy that preschoolers can use it, yet so engaging that calculus students can use it.  To find a program that can seamlessly move across grade levels like that is incredible. 

Like I said before, using technology in the classroom is a natural step this day in age.  Our kids are capable of so much and this is just another example of that.  If we can get them to learn while they think they are playing, we are winning (and so are they)! IXL has an easy to use platform that is fun and colorful.  You can see in these screenshots that it would be easy to draw kids in and have them want to use it.  My kids currently use IXL at their school and they love it, so I cannot wait to implement it into my classroom.