Hello! My name is Shawn Foster, and I am a graduate student working toward my Master's Degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). I am a fourth grade teacher, and I have found that my training in TESOL is providing a wealth of useful tools and strategies for working with all of my students, both native English speakers and my English Learners (ELs).

For this ongoing project, I set up a number of various Google alerts that included different elements of TESOL instruction, technology, and second language acquisition. I have been getting a large volume of results, and I plan on sorting them into my LiveBinder site so that they will be organized and readily available. I have found that I had to refine some of my Google alerts: for instance, "ESL" tagged an article on "Electronic Shelf Label." I am very excited about the new technology we will be exploring, but there will certainly be a learning curve!

One article that struck me this week was an opinion piece written by Shannon Butler entitled "Connecting Families and Schools is Key to Academic Success" (https://www.ocala.com/opinion/20180930/shannon-butler-connecting-families-and-schools-is-key-to-academic-success). While the article covered education as a whole, Shannon mentioned an outreach program that works to provide bilingual communication to families of ELs. The article stood out to me because I started to realize how perfect many of the applications and programs we are exploring can be for connecting school and home. The benefits for parent involvement are numerous, and if we can find ways to engage the families of our ELs in their learning, it will provide the teachers with more information on their students, support for student learning, and additional opportunities for practice of L2 skills. While technology can have a great impact within the walls of the classroom, it is also important to remember that it can be used an efficient and highly effective outreach as well.