I took an example quiz on the Quia website on copyrighting and plagiarism, and it worked! This is a great example of using the internet and technology to create formal and informal assessments of your students!
Another site they list in the text on page 181 is thinkfinity, and it allows you to find resources for games and other educational tools. I used it and found links to all sorts of fun math games!Here is the link:
I have used several of the search engines they list on page 184, but I find I use Google most often. For school research, I used the library databases. There are so many websites and so much information out there on the internet and so I like how the text cautions that we should evaluate the websites before we give the information to our students or let them explore it.
2. The In Your Experience Question is: "How do some of your favorite websites measure up to some of the criteria discussed in this section with regard to website suitability?"
Most of the websites I use for research is through the WSU library page, and so I think these are sources that are acceptable to use when writing a paper and so fourth. Many of my teachers do not want us using wikipedia and google as primary sources of our research. This is because they can be written and edited by anyone and we can not verify its creditability. I use Facebook a lot as well but do not think it should be used by students during school hours. I would not allow them to use it for research purposes because it doesn't met the suitability criteria listed on page 187.
3. For my exploration, I choose to do # 5, which said to use two search engines and see if the results were similar. I choose to use Google and Yahoo. Here is what I found: I did a search on "frogs" and this is what Google came up with:
Here is what Yahoo came up with with I did the same search:
The results were similar, with a section for images, and then the websites listed next.
4. Finally I am going to reflect on the following questions:
Alan November, a leader in technology integration states that, “‘technology is only the digital plumbing,’… new gadgets will soon replace current ones... However... ‘What will not go away is access to the overwhelming amounts of shifting (and growing) information and global communications. Our planning focus must shift to clearly define what it means to be Web literate and to link our students to authentic audiences around the world and across the curriculum’” (as cited in Marzano & Heflebower, 2012).
How does November’s statement relate to Morphew’s (2012) belief that, “teachers can be instrumental in helping students transfer their current knowledge to new technologies, gain new insights, and grow and develop as individuals and citizens of the world”? What are your personal beliefs about teaching in the digital-age classroom? How do you view the role that you will play in this aspect of teaching and learning? Have your personal beliefs evolved since you completed your timeline post?
I think they are related in that they both state that technology is always evolving, and that we as teachers need to be aware of new technology and how it will impact the learning of our students. I think that it would be hard to be a teacher and not embrace the new technology in the classroom. The students are probably more familiar with the technology than we are! We need to learn to use technology in a way that will enhance our students' learning. I think that my role in this will be to learn how to use the technology in my classroom and the tools that are available to us, and then pass along that knowledge to my students. I have learned that technology is changing on almost a daily basis and that sometimes it can be hard to keep up, but anymore in our culture we have to learn how to adapt and change with the technology. This is how I feel since my technology timeline post.
I completely understand not wanting to use facebook during classroom hours but I am wondering your opinion on using other more educationally based social networking sites that allow students to comment on each others ideas and communicate directly? I know of a website called 43 Things which allows users to post goals and find people with shared goals to help motivate or help work toward achieving this goal. Do you think this could be used in classrooms by individuals or even on a full class basis?
ReplyDeleteYou're a Google girl like me :) And I think that I use the library databases the most besides Google just like you! haha. Thinkinfinity was an awesome website and I will be keeping that in my educational website database. I like reading your blog and getting to know you more :)
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