I found most features of Teacher Web extremely helpful! First and foremost, it is a great website that allows all students to stay informed on what is going on in the classroom. Online it provides easy access to homework, handouts, a calendar, and much more. Secondly, this website provides students with a grade update. Looking back to elementary school, my parents always found it important to know what my grades were on a monthly, if not weekly, basis. With this website, checking students grades is so much easier and easily accessible. Lastly, this website would be beneficial because it is a safe way to provide learning links outside of the “safe” classroom website. With guided direction, students are able to find informational websites rather than smack. With a brief introduction, I am positive that students will be able to master this website and use it as a helpful tool throughout the year.
I feel that the top two ways that students could use a class website to enhance their learning is by the calendar of events, and assignment instructions. A calendar of events is important because it allows the students to keep updated and know what is due, and when it is due. This allows students to keep track of dates on their own, with extra reminders from the teacher. Also, assignment instructions are important on a class web site because you can provide an example, and overly-descriptive instructions to guide your students through an assignment. I always felt that I didn’t have enough information on projects when I was younger, and a class website would be the perfect place to provide more of it.
I feel that the two strongest features within the Teacher Web system were the Quiz page and the Student Grades page. I feel that the Quiz page was one of the strongest because this allows students to study what is going to be on an actual quiz and gives them practice. It also helps me as a teacher find out where the students were before they studied or took the actual quiz. I feel that the Student’s Grades page was also a very strong feature because it allows students to always be updated on the grade book. It is helpful to be able to log on and see your progress.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Engaging Students with Concept Mapping
After exploring concept mapping, I feel that this would be great innovative software to use in my classroom. Concept Mapping can be an extremely effective method of taking notes because they show not only the facts, but the overall structure of the subject. Concept mapping helps to associate ideas and makes connections that might not otherwise be made. The fact that concept mapping is now available through software is so cool! It allows students to bring together the strengths of concept mapping with the power of technology. This program makes it easy for users of all ages to construct and modify concept maps in a similar way that a word processor makes it easy to write text. In this way, concept maps can serve as the indexing and navigational tools for complex domains of knowledge.
Concept Mapping software is a useful technique that will improve the way my students take notes, brainstorm, design a complex structure, communicate ideas, and much more. It will support and enhance my students’ creative problem solving. I will be able to use concept mapping when I want my students to understand the structure of a subject I am teaching and the way that pieces of information fit together. Concept mapping will be important in research topics, as well as free writing time. I feel that these will benefit my classroom a lot!
Some specific examples of concept mapping that I can bring into my classroom are to have my students create a concept map before writing any essays, before constructing any projects, before completing any math assigments, and many more activities. It’s a great brainstorming tool and engages many thoughts that might not have been available before thinking outside the box!
Concept Mapping can be an extremely effective method of taking notes because they show not only the facts, but the overall structure of the subject. Concept mapping helps to associate ideas and makes connections that might not otherwise be made. It is a useful technique that will improve the way my students take notes, brainstorm, design a complex structure, communicate ideas, and much more.
I feel that it shouldn’t take too much time to learn this type of application. I feel that my students would be able to learn and understand the process within two days of instruction. It would definitely be worth the time! I feel that concept maps are very helpful in the brainstorming step to any project or assignment!
Concept Mapping software is a useful technique that will improve the way my students take notes, brainstorm, design a complex structure, communicate ideas, and much more. It will support and enhance my students’ creative problem solving. I will be able to use concept mapping when I want my students to understand the structure of a subject I am teaching and the way that pieces of information fit together. Concept mapping will be important in research topics, as well as free writing time. I feel that these will benefit my classroom a lot!
Some specific examples of concept mapping that I can bring into my classroom are to have my students create a concept map before writing any essays, before constructing any projects, before completing any math assigments, and many more activities. It’s a great brainstorming tool and engages many thoughts that might not have been available before thinking outside the box!
Concept Mapping can be an extremely effective method of taking notes because they show not only the facts, but the overall structure of the subject. Concept mapping helps to associate ideas and makes connections that might not otherwise be made. It is a useful technique that will improve the way my students take notes, brainstorm, design a complex structure, communicate ideas, and much more.
I feel that it shouldn’t take too much time to learn this type of application. I feel that my students would be able to learn and understand the process within two days of instruction. It would definitely be worth the time! I feel that concept maps are very helpful in the brainstorming step to any project or assignment!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Blogs and Wikis in Education
When asked to use three different search engines while searching “Educational Blogs” and “Educational Wikis” I found that there were many similar results. I used the Google, Dogpile, and Yahoo search engines and found the same results on the first page for all three engines. For the blogs, the first webpage available was the same on all three pages! However, this was not the case for the wikis.
Blogs and wikis are being used in many interesting and innovative ways within kindergarten and 12th grade classrooms. For example, in budtheteacher.typepad.com Bud allows interaction through live blogging. He is able to communicate with his students as if they were speaking in person. A great teaching tool I found at edublog.com was a place where students can post responses to specific questions about a story and as a forum for sharing students’ individual responses about their readings. Lastly, at lewiselementary.org, I found many useful tools that can keep parents, as well as students updated at all times! The calendar of events, random announcements, principle notes, and curriculum are just several of the many examples that this website used to be innovative.
A RSS reader also known as an aggregator is a client software or a Web application which collects news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and blogs in a single location for easy viewing. Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. This will be helpful with a classroom setting because when one of your students turns in an assignment then you would be aware of it right away.
Blogs and wikis have many pros as well as a few cons. Some of the pros these web technologies have to offer include that they provide important information to your students, your parents, and anyone that feels they need to know and also blogging and wikis are very environmental friendly; they don’t require paper so you can “go green” effectively. Blogs and wikis also have their cons. For example, if you are lazy with your blog and do not update your information when students and parents are counting on you, this can be a disadvantage. Also, if there is a power outage and no other way of getting to the assignments or handouts, this can prove to be difficult.
Blogs and wikis are being used in many interesting and innovative ways within kindergarten and 12th grade classrooms. For example, in budtheteacher.typepad.com Bud allows interaction through live blogging. He is able to communicate with his students as if they were speaking in person. A great teaching tool I found at edublog.com was a place where students can post responses to specific questions about a story and as a forum for sharing students’ individual responses about their readings. Lastly, at lewiselementary.org, I found many useful tools that can keep parents, as well as students updated at all times! The calendar of events, random announcements, principle notes, and curriculum are just several of the many examples that this website used to be innovative.
A RSS reader also known as an aggregator is a client software or a Web application which collects news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and blogs in a single location for easy viewing. Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. This will be helpful with a classroom setting because when one of your students turns in an assignment then you would be aware of it right away.
Blogs and wikis have many pros as well as a few cons. Some of the pros these web technologies have to offer include that they provide important information to your students, your parents, and anyone that feels they need to know and also blogging and wikis are very environmental friendly; they don’t require paper so you can “go green” effectively. Blogs and wikis also have their cons. For example, if you are lazy with your blog and do not update your information when students and parents are counting on you, this can be a disadvantage. Also, if there is a power outage and no other way of getting to the assignments or handouts, this can prove to be difficult.
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