Mapping Student Minds

This article was really interesting to read. i always enjoy to read about activities that are being conducted that incorporate the community. in this case taking the natural environment and transforming it into a project helps the students relate how relevant the curriculum is to their every day life. It seems that the program that specific class using was very similar to Inspiration. Having students collect and plot information is very useful, and by having the technology at their fingertips makes it a lot easier. It was really great to then see the students create casual maps to show the relationships of the data that was collected. Sometimes the data is just collected and plotted and that is the end of the project, but not here, I also found it fascinating to see that the class was working with an after school club to make this project last over a long a period time to see the effects over time.

These types of activities/projects can be very useful because you are incorporating all of the students and their different learning styles. The naturalistic learners are able to explore nature, the logical learners have a good time collecting date, the visual learners enjoy plotting and mapping the relationships. Overall this project can be very successful if give the time and resources to conduct it.  When I was in high school my class did something similar to this. We were asked to address analyze a landscaping job and come up with suggestion to problems.

 

Teaching Students To Use The Internet As A Research Tool (Week 4)

The article Teaching Students To Use The Internet As A Research Tool was very insightful because it talks about how to see if a website a student is using is a good one.  One thing that it mentions is evaluating the sites based on a number of things. It also offers some advices on using certain sites with certain URL’s. The list of the different search engines is very useful because it tells you how to use these search engines, and it also mentions of the content found on these search engines.  What were also cool on this article were the few teacher resources that are shared. By offering these sites to teachers we can use them and try to incorporate them in the class. I would really have to agree with the conclusion, the Internet is available tool that is out there, and as teachers it is our job to teach the students how to use it in a effective and productive manner to conduct research.

Excel reflections

Learning to use Excel is one of the best things. I went from basically inputting the numbers manually and adding manually, to being able to create documents with formulas that compute by a touch of the keyboard. I can remember mfdgdfgfdgfdg435543454y teachers in elementary school used to have their grade book where they would input our grades, I can only imagine how time consuming and messy that grade book got. Now Excel facilitates the process of calculating grades among an array of other things.  And the best thing about it is that you can also create charts from the data that is on the screen. Overall I would have to say that learning excel is very beneficial, not just for future teachers but for everyone. Whether you are creating a name list, or making a budget for yourself, or a business it helps you save time. Once you know the basics in Excel its straight forward from there, the hardest part is setting up the cells with the formulas, I had already worked with excel a little, but the formulas where a new thing for me.

Oh The Changes

In the article that we had to do I liked the part on page 9 were it talked how teachers need to challenge their students more, because technology is becoming so advanced the need to implement it needs to be appropriate. In the same section it also talked about how a teacher cant give extra points to a student who uses PowerPoint and dock down points for a hand made visual. I would have to say that I agree because sometimes the resources, in this case, a computer are not always available. In my opinion teachers should only require students to use such technology if the time and resources are provided for them.

On page 9 it also talked of how technology has made it fast, by getting rid of the pencil, writing becomes faster, and it makes revision faster,

Reading the quotes from the kids about this technology makes me remember that growing up the I too used some of these programs, at the time they seemed really cool but now looking back and comparing it with the technology that is out there, it was rather primitive.

This week something that I learned was the rubric maker on Rubistar. This is one of the most useful things I have found. To know that there are rubrics for certain things already made for you is great. It can only make life a little bit easier. Another important thing I learned in this week’s class was about the Internet. I did not know that https:// was a secure website, knowing this makes me relaxed when I’m on the Internet and especially when doing transactions.