Role Play

My group got to do the role play with the flip video cameras. It was pretty sweet to have such a small camera devise that you could use in the classroom that is some what of a reasonable price. It can be cost effective if you got like a classroom set of say 5 or 6 and use grants to earn the money to get the devices. I thought it was pretty sweet idea though however. I would like to utilize this in my classroom and I think that it would be a great motivation for the students. They would love to use these and to record themselves. And there is so many different curriculum ideas that you could integrate them into the classroom and course content. I really want to look into to them to get for my future classroom. That is a technology that I am comfortable with and that I know i can use efficiently and effectively for my students. Technology in the classroom can be extremely effective when it is used properly and when you can get the means to use it. I need to really learn how to write grants so that i can be able to acquire all of these new technologies into the classroom. It would be such benefit and highly effective and i want to be able to use them in any grade level that I will be able to teach.

It was nice to be able to talk through a discussion like that as well because it was good to see different view points to the same subject and try and look and technology from all different view points and angles. It was good to be able to talk through it and really get a good look at what could be going on in your future job when trying to convince others that technology is good and that it needs to be in the classroom. So i think that it was good practice to talk through and practice dialogue.

Website Evaluations

Today we did website evaluations and I thought it was a good chance or us to be able to really get down and look deeper into websites that we normally wouldn't have. I thought that the forms were pretty good. I liked the cyberguild evaluation the best because i thought it was the most thorough and provided the most critical information to look at. It was nice to go and look for the information that it was asking for to honestly see if it was a credible site or not.

I don't know if i found any hidden secrets, but i did find that i haven't been looking at websites close enough for their credibility. I was interesting to see what sites had authors, or creators, when they were last updated etc. I found some good websites that I actually really liked to and that i want to use and implement into my future classroom. So i thought that that was really exciting and good :D

I think that it is important to go and look at the websites that you are using or that you want your students to use as well. As a teacher it is our responsibility to make sure that what we are using or putting in front of our students is accurate and appropriate for them. By doing website evaluations you are doing the necessary research that it takes in order to find those websites that you are able to use. You need to show your parents and students that you are really preparing valuable and educational material and websites for their children. You your self need to be credible so you have to find information that is creditable as well.

Yes, i think if the website is a .org, or .edu or .gov i wouldn't go through a proper evaluation of the website because it is pretty much already done that for you in order to be one of those sites. I mean there are small chances that the sites aren't but for the most part they are going to be creditable. I would check all of the .com's out and really take a hard look at those websites before pulling information and using information from those sites.

Instructional Architect

Today we learned about the instructional architect technology to use in the classroom and to develop them into a way to create a webquest lesson plan for our students. I thought that it was a very helpful tool, although I did think it was really hard to find resources, at least for my particular lesson plan. I didn't like the search engine that was used in the system because it didn't really allow me to search how I wanted to and then when i did put in a search it came up with things that didn't pertain to my topic at all. So I found that to be some what challenging for me to figure something out. But I keep searching and used google as well, and found information that i could use. So I thought that it was really interesting and it is going to be a great tool to use in the classroom and Im excited to use it. I think that it is going to be a very motivational and exciting tool for the students to want to use and will want to learn about everything that you want them to. I'm really hoping that my computer skills will latter get better because of know I'm struggling with how to exactly do everything that I want to and how I want it to work. So that is a frustration for me, my own technology incompetence haha But it will be a good thing once I can figure everything else out. It is a great tool to utilize in the classroom and I can't wait to use it to my advantage latter on in the future.

Webquest

Today we learned about webquest and how to find different lessons that you could incorporate into your classroom. I thought that it was a pretty sweet website to use for your class. There was something for pretty much any content area for any grade level. The only thing is that it is kind of a hit and miss, because you might need or want a specific lesson but it won't be on the webquest. So its a matter of finding something to use that is already there. I thought that it was good for the classroom and a great way to integrate technology into the classroom. For the most part i thought that they were really good for for the students. However, i thought that some of the webquests that were on there weren't really something that you did online. They were things that would needed to be done in the classroom with other materials and not on-line. I understand that that needs to happen sometimes as well, I just thought that some of them could of been more involved on line and not so much based in the classroom. But for the most part I really liked the idea and it is something that I think the students would love to work on in the classroom. It seems like it would be really beneficial to the students as well as being very motivational to the students as well. I would love to create a new webquest for my own lesson sometime and really develop a good lesson for my own students as well as for future teachers. I really liked how it incorporates and integrates more than one subject area and made it a great learning experience for the students. :D