Post #9

I feel like the project is a great opportunity to work with other students in my class. Not only will I be able to use the skills that I've aquired over the semester but working in groups also allows me to learn to work well with others. I think that this is beneficial because in order for a school to be successful, all the faculty member must work well as a team. It is also exciting to be a part of a project that will actually be used in a real classroom. I feel like these students are depending on me to get a good review of this story!
The ways that I have contributed to my team is starting to write the two page paper that is also required for this project. Seeing that the power point does not require 3 people be working on it at the same time, my group members and I decided that we could just start on different parts of the project. As we began to make progess and the powerpoint started to grow, I attempted to inject a little bit of my personality into the design of the presentation. I added some funny pictures and changed the colors that was more suitable for the topic.
One thing that i have learned in the previous week is the benifits of wikispace. It is a great tool for group projects because it allows people to have a home base where all the information can be stored. This way when a part of the project is changed all the group members can see and it is also an easy way to communicate with each other.

Post #8

Adopting webquesting into our project would be a very smart and benificial thing to do because it is a very effective way of internet research. The objective of Webquest is to challenge students to use higher order thinking skills (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) as they interact with information. Since the topic of our project is on Jane Goodall, the information would be on how see interacts with monkeys and the research that she has done on them. This webquest would include an introduction, task, process of completing the task, evaluation and conclusion. By following these steps one would be able to engage with the information.

http://www.pampetty.com/countrymusic.htm
I think that this is a good webquest because it has all the requirments neccessary for creating a successful representation of content. This webquest also forces you to create a portfilio where you would be able pick apart a topic like country music and analyze it in many different ways. For example you will be able organize information about country music heros, different lyrics, current country music hits, etc. This webquest also gives you a set of questions to answer that allows you write down your personal thoughts about the information. I think this is important because it adds another dimension to the webquest.

Post #7

One web based tool that would be very useful to me is one called " Remember the Milk". I like this one because I am someone who needs to right down my tasks or else I am very prone to forget something. With a web based tool like "Remember the Milk" I would be better organized and fully aware of all the things I need to get done within a certain time frame. This tool will also send you constant reminders of upcoming events which makes you stay on task and it also looks like alot of fun to play around.

http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

I think that excel will be very useful as a teacher because it is a great tool to track individual student progression. With excel I would be able to record grades and attendence. Excel also allows you to manage a budget for a field trip or a classroom party. For teaching purposes excel is very useful as well because in my future history class the students will be able to create charts explaining when things occured and the better understand how things have changed over time. For example a student could record the prices of a can of coke over the past 50 years and see how much the economy has changed over the period of time.

One case that Ive used excel creatively is when I create a weekly to-do list of all the things I need to get done. Most of these things have to do with certain homework assignments and important test dates. Although I know that excel can be used in different teaching situations, I find it more effective when trying to stay organized with personal tasks. So the for me excel is used more for student planner type purposes.

POST #6

With the rubric described in chapter 8, my evaluation of my own powerpoint assignment was pretty good. I made sure my spelling and grammer was acceptable and the content was also something worth learning about. I also feel that my information was organized and easy to manage. One thing I could have improved on was the presentation design. I think that it could have used a better variety of color and display design.
A non-computer audio visual technology that I will incorporate in my classroom is the use of videos. As a student I always enjoyed when my teacher had a video for us to watch because it was an effective change of pace. Rather then learning a certain topic through a lecture, sometimes it helps to learn from different method. It would also help keep the students interested.
An important tool Ive learned in the past week is being able to create concept maps on inspiration. I think that with this skill I will be better able to organinze information in the future. I can also include these maps in my teaching arsenal becuause it gives students a visual of the information that I will be teaching. Students can follow along by just moving from main topic to sub topic and as a result they will have a better understanding of the information.

ESPN: The Worldwide Leader In Sports

ESPN: The Worldwide Leader In Sports


I think that this website provides a very simplely designed homepage in which an observer would not be confused in any way. For one the type of text styles is somewhat limited and the colors are also pretty consistent. The balance between images and text is another strength of this website. Some websites may contain too much text or too many images but espn does a good job creating an appealing page. I don't believe that this page contain frivolous information aswell. All of the images have a purpose and are not displayed for just the sake of decoration.

Using presentation software in classrooms have various advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages would be that it presents information in a very organized and eye appealing way. For example powerpoint allows teachers to bullet information on slides and along with the info he or she is able to add pictures. The disadvantages of presentation software is that is may take away from the teacher-student intaction. I have been in classes where a teacher would just read through a power point and it was hard for me to pay attention and retain the information.

If i had to use power point in my classroom i would just use it to organize the main topics of my lectures. For example if i was teaching all the different types of weather...rain, snow, and sunshine would be my main topics. These slides many contain images aswell and other subtopics. From there i would use my power point as a reference and make sure that my students know that i am not dependent on technology.

Concept Map

Post #4

The concepts presented in chapter 9 are great ways to make learning easier for students. For example, idea mapping is a great way for students to organize and expand their ideas. It involves breaking down a broad topic into much smaller subtopics and and expanding on each. To represent a topic visually, students might use a tree map or a brace map because these maps graphically demonstrate the hierarchy of categories that they are studying. Idea maps would also be pretty simple to create because you can create templates through hypermedia.

I would strongly encourage my students to create outlines and idea maps because it allows them to get all their ideas on paper. Organization is also another very important reason why outlines are very effective. When creating a project, organization tools are so important because they force students to expand on their ideas and gives them a guide when actually creating their projects.

An important skill that i have learned in the past week is being able to recognize a website that i can trust. I now understand that certain websites may have information that is invalid and recognizing them is a very important tool that I have acquired. For example looking at when something has been posted is a good way to see if the information is valid. Things that have been posted a long time ago would be something you might not want to use as research. Another way to see if a website is trustful is looking at what the websites end in. Usually websites that end in (.gov) are well maintained and contain valid information.