Blog 5: What I have learned in this class

I think that this class has been very beneficial to me as a future teacher.  I think that I will use a lot of the things that I learned in this class.   The google tools, such as Google Earth, will be very helpful for classes like World Geography to help students get a better feel for the spatial relationship between countries.

I was aware of unitedstreaming before this class, but I will definitely be using that in the future.  The quality of the videos and pictures on that website are outstanding, I only hope that the future school where I teach has a subscription so I don’t have to sign up every 30 days with a new account.

I hadn’t really thought of using blogs as a means to encourage participation in classes, but after taking this course, I think I will.  It is the same principle as a having a journal in class, and it might encourage students to write more because it is online.

Also, previous to taking this class, I had never heard of using social bookmarks.  I think that social bookmarks would be very helpful, especially for a current events type of class.  I could include a list of the news items that we would be talking about everyday onto my social bookmark that way the students would be able to come prepared to class.

Blog 4: Websites for my content area

1. http://www.ncss.org – This is the website for the National Council for the Social Studies. This organization publishes the magazine The Social Studies, and the website is very helpful for social studies teachers. It is helpful to teachers because it includes lesson plans, curriculum standards, primary documents, job listings, and a plethora of other resources for social studies teachers.

2. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/index.html - This website is designed to aid teachers who are teaching current events. This website has a daily list of the top stories and also a daily quiz. I think that this will be helpful for teachers of current events so that they can have a list of the top stories and also is a place where the students can go to keep up on the news.

3. http://www.cagle.com/teacher/ – This site is loaded with political cartoon to help social studies teachers. The cartoons come with descriptions and questions that can be helpful in teaching lessons.

4. http://www.virtualtourist.com/ – This site would definitely come in handy for teaching geography. It has tons of information on different locations of geographic interest in the world. It gives main attractions, hotels, and reviews by individual members of the site. It would be a great tool to help history come to life.

5. http://killeenroos.com/link/research.htm This website has a plethora of different free resources that could be used for student research papers. There are free online magazines and websites and encyclopedias that would definitely help students who were working on a research based assignment.

6. http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/Default.aspx This website is a very good website created by c-span for educators. It has several resources that can be used for a government class. Most of the information and discussion questions are from current events.

7.  http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Geography.htm  This website contains several different map games for use in Geography.  I really like it because it would be very beneficial for students that need help outside of class to learn the different locations of states, nations, and capitals.

8. http://www.hyperhistory.com/ – this website has several different charts and maps which show how different regions have developed in world history.  I think it could be a very useful website to pull information from in a World History class.

9.  http://www.sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/worldmapper/index.html  – This website has different maps that can be used to highlight the disparity of resources and population across the world.  These maps would be a good attention grabber in a current events or world geography class.

10.  http://www.libs.uga.edu/ref/turabian.html – This website shows how to cite information.  It could be very helpful as several high schools I have been to include a research paper in a senior history/english class.

 

Blog Post 3: ALTEC

The ALTEC tools look very interesting and time saving.  I especially liked the pre-made forms on Casa Notes.  Such tools are a great thing for a new teacher to have.  I am very glad that I am now aware of them, because I will definitely use them.  I had never heard of web quests until my observation this year and I am glad that there are some ready to use on this site.  Other things on  here that will make my job easier are the Rubric and Worksheet creator.  Some of the things, such as Think Tank would have been very helpful to be aware of as a student in college because it helps with research.

The teacher who I showed it to was the one who introduced me to web quests.  He thought it would be a very useful site to pull stuff from.  The site that he showed me for webquests is www.questgarden.com

Blog Post 2: Apple Learning Interchange

I think that the Apple Learning Interchange has a great potential to help teachers.  It is sort of like a social networking site (Facebook or Myspace) and it allows you to find other educators.  I did a search on Fort Hays State University and found that I knew several of the students that are on there.  I am not sure the extent that it will take off, but I hope that it does.

I showed my cooperating teacher in my Secondary School Experiences class and he thought that it was a very interesting site, and he also saw it as having great potential to help teachers.  I am very grateful that I’ve had this class before I go out student teaching because I will have many more ideas for resources to use.

Blog Post 1: Article and Site Reflections

The first article from the USA today was very informative.  I think that there is no question that the average student is more computer literate than the average teacher.  Most of the teachers which I have talked to and asked them what they do with technology tell me that it changes too fast to keep up with it.  Things do change quickly, but since technology is becoming so integrated into our society, schools should reflect that and prepare students to live in that enviroment.  This job falls on the teachers.

 The National Education Technology Plan was very informative.  Basically, this website’s position is that our schools are stuck in the past, and need to move into the digital age.  I believe this wholeheartedly, and I support technology being used much more in the average school than it currently is because we are preparing students to enter a world filled with technology.  I also believe that when students are allowed to use technology on assignments, it motivates them more.  What we must be careful about, is the amount of time that students can waste by using their computers inappropriately at school.  New advancements in technology should be learned by teachers and available to students.

The National Education Technology Standards Project website was also very informative.  I think that technology can make students more ready for a changing society.  I think the challenge that we face is that there are many teachers out there who do not adapt to technological changes.  I think that standards have to be put in place because education should not lag behind the rest of the society in technology.

 

Adapt and Adopt – I think that this author had very good points.  I definitely agree that for technological revolution to occur that every student must have their own computer.  Until this happens, I don’t think that we can have new things done in new ways.  This article sort of makes me nervous to enter teaching because of the vast changes that he sees on the horizon.  In twenty years, the school system as we know it could be different in almost every aspect than it is today.

 The HighSchool.com article was very interesting.  The fact that students will have the ability to take classes that they are interested in virtually is very encouraging.  I think by doing this, it could be very beneficial to students because they can take a wider variety of courses and get a better idea of what they want to do with their life.  I do believe that some teachers are better at integrating technology than others, and that some students are better at using it than others.  Eventually though, I think that everyone will be better at it, but virtual schools will be a great option for those who would like to pursue their education in that manner.

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