Weekly Blog #13 the last.

Our last class was a lot of fun.  At least, it was for me.  I have never made a website before and have always wanted to.  I didn't know it could be so hard, and so easy.

Writitng an entire website in html "language" would be really hard and take a lot of time.  Just the short little ones we made took a while.  It is hard to remember all of the different tags and you have to be really careful to not forget anything.  I've had a little bit of experience with html because of my family's wiki, but I think ours is a simplified version.

I don't know if I could ever write my own webpage.  I mean, I could probably figure out how to format it and get all the information on it, but we didn't talk about how to put it on the internet so I have would have no idea what to do.

It was good to know what goes into making a website, but I'm glad there is always google around to help us out.  Google Sites is pretty awesome.  It reminded me a lot of instructional architect, but that is probably becuase I made it look similar and created it for an elementary school class.  I like Google Sites way better.  It has so many more features and, like all google products, it is more straight forward and user friendly.

Websites can be used for anything.  For teachers, websites can be used for specific classes so that any information the students need is available online.  Or, you can use it to post your own ideas or lesson plans so that other teachers can access them.  However, they should be sure to include their name on the page, when it was last updated, and their credentials, as well as where their information originated from.  Otherwise, their site will receive poor evaluations and no one will use it.

Now, there is a cetain paper I need to go write, so I will end there.

Website Evaluations

For my website evaluations, I used MidLink's Web Page Evaluation because it was concise and easy to understand.  It worked well for the websites I evaluated, but I wasn't sure if the scale was really appropriate.  Also, I think an evaluation should be based more on the creator of the website and their credentials and reasons for creating the site and not as much on the "clearly marked buttons," etc.

After completing my evaluations, I looked over the other forms and realized that I like Blue Valley School District's form a lot.  It is divided into rational sections, i.e. Authority, Accuracy, Objectivity, and Currency. These make are more important to focus on when evaluating a site.  For teachers, at least, accuracy and currency are more important than navigation.  If you are planning to let your students explore the site, appropriateness and content might be better to focus on.

In general, I do not think a formal evaluation is needed.  If you find a website you like and can find out who wrote it (and why), then you don't need a form to decide if you will use it or not.  The form takes some time to fill out and not everyone has the time to take.  In certain cases, such as when writing a doctoral thesis, it would be acceptable to fill out a formal evaluation for a website.  Most sites that end with .gov or .edu can be trusted without evaluation, but, as with any site, if it appears questionable, an evaluation (physically or mentally) may be needed.  

These evaluations brought to my attention the fact that authors of web pages are not often located on the main page of their sites.  Many sites have no author credited at all or it is simply implied in the content.  Such websites are hard to trust since no one seems to want the credit for making it.  The "last updated" time stamp was displayed more often than the author, which alone can determine if a website is worthy of your need for it or not.

Mostly, these evaluation forms made me focus and look for parts of a webpage that I never cared about before.  I was used to evaluating websites for layout, usefulness, how easy it was to find things and navigate.  I guess I never thought of questioning validity of content.  I just went off of instinct.

Evaluating websites is really important, especially for teachers.  If you take something off of the internet and call it fact when it was made up by some random person, you could get in a lot of trouble and won't be teaching students correct information.  Also, if the information was written by someone who is selling something, it would contain a lot of bias that is also not good to pass on to students.  Bias can be really hard to detect, especially when dealing with social studies, but if you can identify why a website was created, then you have a much better chance of teaching true facts and not misguiding children.

Weekly Blog #12

Digital Cameras have many useful qualities, as I discussed before. But what is the value of a photograph?

Yes, A picture is worth a thousand words, but how are they useful in a classroom?

Pictures help everyone learn, especially visual learners. When a teacher references a place, pictures can allow students to better understand the context and develop a deeper understanding of what is being said. Imaginations are great, but sometimes students need more than words to visualize a situation, location, or event. This is where pictures can help the most. When someone i s talking about a road, the students could be thinking of millions of different examples that may not fit the situation. Showing a photograph of the specific road they are talking about can provide true comprehension of what is being discussed in class.

This week we also mentioned that websites cannot always be trusted. As teachers and students, we need to evaluate them before blindly accepting them. There are many different ways to discover if the information is correct or useful, but I will go into further detail at a later date.

Google Docs can help you when collaboratively writing. It can also help you as you teach students to write and as you gather ideas for teaching. I've used it to have others edit my own papers. By editing it online, more than one person could read it at the same time and make changes that coincide with the changes that others make. This saved me a lot of time because I did not have to go back through and merge different edited versions of the same paper.

I really like Google Docs and had no idea all of the ways you can implement it in the classroom.  Mr. Johnson seems to really like it, too.  And if your classroom had the resources he has, then running your class the way he does would be a great idea.  However, most schools don't have that many computers, so online documents cannot be feasibly used during class time.  The students in my practicum can hardly type at all, and they are in fourth grade, which is unfortunate. . .

Google also has spreadsheets, which I've breifly glanced at before, but had never really used before class. The spreadsheets can be used when collecting data and can also be collaborative projects. This means that a teacher in Oregon can enter information about her class and a teacher in Georgia can enter information about her class and they can combine them at the same time.  Teachers can use it for grades, filling out forms, or calculating information, too.

Students can use spreadsheets for projects or field trips. They can enter survey numbers or data they've gathered.  Plus, once you enter in the data, you can make charts or graphs out of the information.  These again will help visual learners to better understand the information because they can see comparisons or the mean, median, and mode of a data set.  

Google docs and spreadsheets make it possible to view a document on different computers with out emailing an attachment or using a USB drive.  Essentially, this means that jump drives may become obsolete.

Weekly Blog #11

This week we made Geometry Books. I used my own digital picture taking skills to find geometry around town. Then I wrote my own definitions. So don't use them as true definitions because I came up with them on my own.

I thought it was a lot of fun.  As soon as I read about the assignment, I kept looking for and seeing geometry everywhere I went.  I got so involved and was eager to do the assignment because it was fun and engaging.

Digital cameras are fantastic. You can take hundreds of pictures and look at them instantly. You can put them on a computer and show them to others. The only downside is not being able to physically hold them, but if you like specific pictures enough, you can print them yourself or get them professionally printed so you can hang them up or put them in a scrapbook. The actual camera is pretty expensive, but overall, you save money when compared to the cost of printing pictures from a film camera.

I think the geometry book is a great idea for students.  They get to go outside of the classroom and discover things in the real world that relate to what they are learning in class.  It doesn't even have to be geometry.  Students could take pictures of historical places, specific rocks or leaves, or signs with vocabulary words on them.  If the teacher decides to print them out, the students will have a physical artifact of what they have learned that they can showcase or use as a reference.

Having students create a project like this forces them to really understand the concepts and utilize that knowledge by finding, and documenting, examples.  Students end up with a deeper understanding then they would have if they just learned about it from a book or in class and they come away from the lesson with a good attitude because it was fun.  No mental blocks against math when you enjoyed the experience of learning it. If only I had had experiences with science in elementary school that were this much fun, I might not hate science like I do now I'm in college.

Geometry Book

Video Blog

Here it is.  The moment you've all been waiting for.  It's time for:

THE VIDEO!

Polar Bears: How they survive in the Arctic

Yes, yes.  It is all very exciting.  But really, I hope you enjoy it.

I certainly enjoyed editing this movie.  I can't say that I enjoyed the entire process, I don't like watching myself, but everything else was great.  It was good to get a feel for all the preparation that is required to make an educational video and the amount of time needed to do a good job.  I've watched others as they edit movies, but I've never been the one doing it, from storyboard to finished product.  

It took a lot more work than I originally thought.  Perhaps if we had written specific lines and knew what we were saying, it would not have taken so long to edit.  Cuting out specific parts and lining up audio was not terribly difficult, just tedious.  If we were to do it again, I would make sure we had a solid storyboard not just an outline of what we wanted.  That way, we could have made the video more exciting with different camera angles or locations.  There were many times, while I was editing, that I wished we had said something just a little differently or included certain facts while excluding repeated lines.

I think the whole idea of video production in the classroom is great.  It can help students in so many ways.  Just the brainstorming and outlining covers grade-level objectives, they wouldn't even need to make a video.  If they did want to actually record it, and they were old enough, I would make sure they were not very long so that editing could occur quickly.  If the students are too young to handle cameras or editing, I would step in and film for them.  Because I would probably not have the time to edit them, I would find some parent volunteers or relatives who could finish the video for us.  By making a video, students can display their work to a wider audience.  Putting the movie on a class website can provide access to parents without them having to take time off of work.  I would not put the video online just anywhere, but on a specific class blog, wiki, etc. that only those connected to the school can access.

When teachers make their own videos, they can show them whenever they want.  If you make it over the summer, it doesn't take away from your planning time, but increases the learning experience instead.  If one of my teachers had taken the time to make their own video, I would have respected them more because they took time out of their life to make something for me.  Plus, watching your teacher do things in a video that she/he doesn't normally do in class can be entertaining, meaning the students will be more engaged and more likely to remember it later.

In my practicum, the teacher has played only two videos and both were Reading Rainbow.  Now, I love the show and the kids love to sing along, but only one small part of the video was actually connected to the learning goal for the day.  The time spent to watch the video would have been much more productive if the teacher had found a video that was more specific to the day's goal, or, better yet, if the teacher had created her own video that educated them on the topic.  She wouldn't have to be in it.  In fact, videos are a great chance to listen to someone else, or see something different than the front of the classroom.  Videos can take students to completely different places.  Visual learners can get the needed information by seeing it differently and auditory learners are helped, as well.

And for those schools who can't afford to go on a lot of field trips, the teacher can go and film what they see there so that students still get to experience it.  Otherwise, they can just use movies as show-and-tell to tell others what they accomplished or presented.