Shelly Fryer is a teacher located in Oklahoma City who works at a wonderful school. The school is set up for homeless children who still deserve an education. He has an exceptional task of keeping these kids motivated and excited about school, when life is rather rough outside of the walls. She has used the emergence of technology to help get kids excited about learning, and broadcasts most of their activities through her private blog.

Her blog is relatively new, she only has posts dating back to last year, but still contains great links. Her main posts are talking about projects that the students have created in her classroom. Her most recent project was a Black History Month activity where students used things like iBooks and iMovie to create their own movie or book detailing the life of someone significant, like Dr. King. The biggest aspect of these projects is that it allows the students to really be invested in them. Taking pride and ownership of something can be hard, and for homeless children it can be even harder.

The blog also shows a lot of fun holiday activities, mostly around Thanksgiving. Being homeless, these children do not have the memories of things like traditions, yet she created a activity that gives the students a new tradition to carry, like carving their own pumpkin in class.

Another great tool of her blog is the connection to her classroom. Her classroom has both a kid blog and general classroom page. Kid blog is a great way for faculty or outside members of the community to support the kids after seeing what they do. Children post their own blog responses and then faculty can comment on them. The kids feel a great sense of pride when a teacher makes a comment on their post.

While this is a personal/classroom blog, compared to the more public ones we have explored thus far, I feel like I enjoy this style far better. Each blog brings its strengths to the table, and the strength in this blog is its innocence. You can truly feel the connection between the students and the school. Her blog does not need big flashy posts or hundreds of comments, she simply wants to show that her children can accomplish great things, and that we can help spread the same concept to our own classrooms.