Inspiration and Web Resources

Inspiration is definitely something that I would invest in for my classroom. Incorporating Inspiration: 1. Unit concept maps 2. Study guides for students 3. Quizzes (for early elementary- put the picture and make them write the word) 4. Venn Diagrams 5. Lab Reports 6. Book Reports 7. Lesson plans (for teachers) 8. Science- Identify the six kingdoms of biology 9. Textbook notetaking 10. Family Tree project

One of my favorite web resources so far has been rubistar. This website is very key for teachers. I have used it hundreds of times and I am not even in student teaching yet. I think this website makes it very easy for teachers to find an assessment that is very easy to create and use.
United Streaming is another web resource that I have found very interesting. This website cuts the movies into segments which is very important for elementary classrooms, because we all know that students can not sit there for long periods of time and watch a boring movie. This way teachers can stop after the first segment and assess the children and then move onto the next segment.

Social Bookmarking

I do believe that social bookmarking is very useful for the classroom, and at any level. Imagine you are in an elementary classroom and you keep having trouble with students going on to websites their not supposed to, or going to the wrong sites to gather information. This website, if applied as the homepage, could show the students the websites that they should start looking at and guide them to successfully finding the correct information. In high school the idea of social bookmarking could be even more important. As with elementary schools the list of websites and resources could be a guide to the student who is unsure of where to search, and just tries to use Wikipedia. Some students today do not know how to successfully search for information on a certain topic and social bookmarking is one way to guide students to the information. The idea of social bookmarking could be compared to the idea of a scaffold. Social bookmarking guides the students with direction from the teacher, but once they are acquainted and understand the teacher can slowly began to lessen the importance of social bookmarking and allow the students to go out on their own. As of right now as a student, social bookmarking is helping me find new websites and save them to a location that I can access them at a later time. I just developed my social bookmarking site on diigo the other day and I can not stop finding new websites to add to my library. I feel like every site that I go onto I find myself trying to add it to my library, even if it has no relation to my assessment for our social bookmarking project. One tool I find useful are the sticky notes that are added to the webpage that you are on. They show specific notes that other people may have added about that website or the information on it.

Google Apps in the Classroom

There are many advantages to using google apps in the classroom. One major advantage is the fact that students will be able to work on a project together at once online. Growing up I was always frustrated with everyone sending me their information and then having to add all the information onto a powerpoint or into a paper. The google app, called google docs, allows the students to work online together so that they can all add their own information to the project. In the google docs app, students can create spreadsheets, powerpoints and regular word documents. I find these apps especially useful for students in high school and college. They will be able to use these apps the more productive than elementary school children. I feel that elementary school children need extra help learning how to use the technology, but once they do learn how to use it they may find it so helpful and fun that they may want to use it from then on.

Blogs in the Classroom

I believe that blogs can be very effective in the classroom at any level of teaching. I feel that blogs may be more useful for students in high school, but elementary students still may be able to use the blog effectively. In high school, teachers could really cut down on the paper use by having the students answer blogs as their homework. This will allow the teacher to simple go online and look at all of the responses instead of having to worry about carrying around all of the written responses. The responses in blogs would also make it easy for the teacher to share with the class. The teacher could put the blogs up on the smartboard and discuss the blogs with the whole class. In elementary school the teacher could use blogs in the same since as high school students but the teacher needs to guide their children a little more because they may not be as technologically inclined as high school students. The teacher in elementary school could use blogs to respond and have discussions on readings they had during the day, or have the students perform a search on someone and share their findings in the blog. There are so many possibilities of lessons that teachers could perform with the help of blogs. The only disadvantage that I see is the fact that you are taking away from the discussion in the class. Students do not learn how to share their thoughts orally and may not learn how to take criticism on their work. Other than that blogs can be very helpfully for classrooms.