🙂
What Makes A Successful Online Experience?
I think that one component of a successful online experience would be a large amount of communication. When you aren’t meeting with a teacher every week, it can be difficult to understand assignments, as well as keep up with all of them. If the student and the teacher communicate on a regular basis, I think that will help the student to be the most successful. The online experience also needs to be organized, again, you don’t meet up with the teacher as often so both the website and the directions need to be really clear so that everyone understands what needs to be done. I think availability is important too because that’s a big aspect of communicate. The student and the teacher need to be available pretty regularly so that they are able to be the most successful. Online experiences should be fun! An online class is something different, but is something that is continuing to grow, not only at our school but all over the world. We should embrace this new type of learning and take advantage of it. It’s a new type of experience and to be successful I think that we need to make the most out of it that we can. I’ve only taken one online class in the past and it was a very good experience. It was actually one of my favorite Education class and I never even met with the teacher. During Winter term, I’m taking two online classes so we will see how well that goes. I’ve never taken more that one at a time or taken an online class while I have in school classes, so I’m hoping that my teachers will follow these successful components so that I am able to be as successful as I can be in this courses.
The most successful online experiences include communication, organization, and are fun.
Week Nine Assignment
Parallel Parking Podcast!
1. Why should teachers embrace mobile learning?
I think that mobile learning is a good idea in many cases because it’s a way to engage students in a fun way! Many of our students will have cell phones and other types of technology so instead of making it into a bad thing, we can have it be a good thing. If we use them as a tool, the students will be less likely to use them out of turn.
2. What are some issues/challenges with mobile learning, and what are some possible solutions?
A big challenge would be that not all students have the mobile learning tools available to them. We can’t expect all the kids to have these technologies at home or on their person. One solution would be to rent them out at school. Like we did in our class, we rented iPads so that everyone could use one, not everyone in the class owned on so this was a good improvise. Another issue might be that parents don’t want their children to be so involved in technology. Maybe they don’t want their child to have an email account and join a website. This is something that you would have to send out letters about or ask permission to the parents because it is not a good idea to get on a parent’s bad side.
3. What are some examples of best practices and practical uses for your desired age group/subject content?
My desired grade is 5th. 5th graders can definitely be troublesome at times so I think it’s a good idea to make students responsible for their actions. If we rent out iPads or something, they would have to “check it out”, for example fill out a sign in sheet so that we know what device goes with which student. Another good idea would be to inform parents of any technologies you are using in class, as well as the technologies that the students may need to use outside of class.
4. Discuss how you might use podcasting in your classroom. Discuss three specific ways that you could use podcasting in your particular age group or content area.
I think podcasting would be a really cool thing to put on our teacher websites. This could be a tool for students who are at home sick or participate in sports. (1) They could listen to the podcast and not be so behind in school. (2) It would also be a resource for the students that have a hard time taking notes, they could listen to the lecture in class, and then go home and listen to it again and take notes or do whatever they have to do to be the most successful. (3) Podcasting would also be a really cool and unique assignment. Fifth graders are old enough, I believe, to work with this kind of technology. They could have to explain a scientific concept, or explain a math problem in a podcast and post it to their blog.
Resources!
socrative!!
Week 9 Assignment
I believe that being information literate means that we know and are able to understand the information that we find on the internet and we are able to see if they information is legitimate or not. I think that as a teacher, the most important thing for us to do is to educate our students and to make them aware of all the frauds out there. We need to teach them what to look for, and how to check the websites to see if their information and authors are reliable. I think this is something that is possible. The article mentions how teaching this to our students once is not enough. It is a lesson that should be continued throughout the year. Every time there is a project that requires internet use, the students should get a reminder. We could include that in the assignment even! If we use a rubric and say that at the end of their papers (or whatever assignment) they need to include their references, as well as how they know they are efficient sites, I think that would get the idea ingrained in their minds. I think that if we are aware, we can teach our students to be too. I like that it mentioned finding three different sides of a topic instead of just finding three articles with the same view on a topic. It’s important for students to get well rounded information because that provides them with the most efficient sources. I believe that there is a way for us to prepare our students to use this effective medium. We just need to be smart about it and make sure that we teach our students to do the same. The article mentions the “rule of thumbs” about the internet and I think those are useful things to follow, maybe even post them in the classroom or put them up in the computer lab. We just need to be critical readers of the internet and make sure our students are too.
Testing Websites
Questions for evaluating websites
1. What do you think the purpose of this site is? What might the goals of the authors be?
2. Who is the author? If it’s not stated in clear view, try checking the contact information. How is the author’s authority established – or is it?
3. What do others say about the authority of this author? Type the author’s name into the search box at www.google.com and see what you can find out.
4. What organization sponsors the site? If this isn’t clear, try locating some hints—like maybe the e-mail address in the contact information.
5. Do an Internet search to locate the home page of the organization you identified. What can you find out about the organization’s mission?
6. What hints can you find in the URL? What kind of an organization sponsored the site? What kind of bias might be implied? The following list might help:
- .com for commercial interests
- .net for network service providers
- .org for non-profit organizations
- .edu for educational interests
- .gov for government institutions
- .mil for military installations
- .info for unrestricted use
- .biz for businesses
- .name for individuals
- About 250 two-letter designations for individual countries/regions of the world.
Does the site represent the organization or is it a personal site? (and therefore personal views)
- A tilde (~) indicates a personal web page
- Users/name indicates a personal web page
7. Go to www.register.com. Click on the Whois Lookup link just above the search box. Type the URL of the website you are checking into the search box, ending with the top-level domain (such as .edu, .com, .org, etc.) . Click on the “Go” button. On the next page, type in the CAPTA letters and click the “Verify Code” button. Be sure to scroll down the next page to look for hints in the contact information. You might want to do a search at www.altavista.com to see what you can find out about the names you see.
8. Find out who is linking to this site. Go to www.altavista.com and type “link:URL (with no spaces. Example: link:www.wou.edu). Read through the results to see who is sending people to visit your site. Does this tell you anything?
9. Find out who is talking about this site. Go to www.google.com and type in “info:URL” (example: info:www.amazon.com). At the bottom of the page, click on the link, Find web pages that contain the term
10. Check to see if there are reports that this information is a hoax. Try some of the following sites:
- Snopes http://www.snopes.com
- UrbanLegends http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blhoax.htm
- Don’t Spread that Hoax http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/default.htm
Note: type in and search for key words, not the website address.
Week 8 in Class good resources
http://www.snopes.com/– useful resource for checking validity of urban legends
The Link
1. Copy the Web address of the source
2. Type http://www.google.com or www.altavista.com and connect to a search engine.
3. Click on the empty search box and type the word link: Don’t forget the colon.
4. After the colon, paste the copied web address
5. Click search- you’ve just generated a list of websites that link to the original
http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/information-literacy-resources/
Week 7 Assignment
I think that use video creation and podcasting are things that could definitely be used in the classroom. Even the video that we made this week is something we could use as teachers. A couple examples, for Spanish class students could make an advertisement for something (say toothpaste) and have to advertise it all in Spanish, in a science class the students could perform the experiments via video, if it was social studies class, they could do a role playing and record it. These would all be fun fine projects that could be more enjoyable than just the normal “write a paper” about it. These tools really show that the student does (or does not) understand the material, in a more fun and creative way. Videos are also a way to have one assignment that addresses multiple standards including technology, possibly art because of the creativity involved, as well as the content that the students are making a video about. This could be a home resources for kids by doing voice overs like the articles says. We learned how to use Jing in class and I think that is something that would be very beneficial to use as a teacher with complex assignments.
Podcast are a good tool to use in classrooms when it comes to lectures. We know that students do not have a long attention span, and some students need to hear things more than one time in order to fully understand it. If we record our lessons in class and upload them as podcasts, our students can look them up whenever they want (to do homework or study for a test) and use our podcasts as a resource tool. We could post these to our blog like the article says and then parents can listen to it as well and help our their children as well. Podcasts are nice because you can take them anywhere, waiting in the doctor’s office, going for a walk, listening to in the shower. This is much easier than carrying around your notebook everywhere you go. The article says that podcasts started with businesses and governments, but schools are really starting to get involved and I think this is a great thing.
Website v. Blog
As we discussed in class, the biggest difference between a blog and a website is that a blog is meant to be changed all the time. It is meant to be updated and random. A website can change, but isn’t meant to be changed on a regular basis. For this week’s assignment, I created a fake teacher page. It’s something that I would probably do when I am a teacher. I liked the idea of having a website that the students and the parents were able to access. My website is: http://msokeeffesclass.weebly.com/
All of my pictures are from googleimages.com
Important Links to Keep Track of
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ Making your own rubrics
http://ed270week1.weebly.com/standards.html Technology Standards
engrade.com a way to keep track of grades
https://ed270.wikispaces.com/ our class wiki space
http://prezi.com/4pnz91io8ink/ed-270-fair-rights-use/ prezo on copy right laws
http://ed270week3.weebly.com/presentation-resources.html tools for teachers on presentations
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_dXVVsw0INHZWloY09Od3F5V2M/edit?usp=sharing classroom management tips
http://www.nea.org/tools/classroom-management-articles.html classroom management
http://www.classroom20.com/ use in new classroom
http://www.disciplinehelp.com using discipline in the classroom
woodle.com word clouds
flickr for pictures
voicethread using images in the classroom
Danni's Blog 