Web Quests

First of all I think that Filamentality will be an excellent resource for us upcoming teachers to use. This is a great way to link interactive learning as well as being exposed to technology. This tool will keep the children engaged and gets them away from the ol' fashioned "go look it up in the book." This allows the student to stay active and learn to sort and look through information while also keeping the information in range and related to the topic at hand. This is also a great way to include the content standards into the curriculum.

On another note another great tool to use is the almighty WebQuests that we all hear so much about these days. No one really understands the power that they have until they actually use them. They were developed in 1995 at San Diego State University by two men by the name's of Bernie Dodge and Tom March. What WebQuests do is structure students to analyze a variety of information and resources so that they can analyze it and use their critical thinking skills to come up with a solution. Often real world wide problems are used and at the end there is usually some form of project or assignment to complete. This would be how the teacher would assess the students comprehension and skills. There are many ways to utilize WebQuests either you can create your own or you can search for ones that are already made. Remember, like anything else, there are always thorough ones and there are always bad ones out there. One way to narrow your search down is to use appropriate search engines and become advanced at learning how to use advanced searches. Some examples of some great WebQuests are an example of a teacher using a pumpkin patch as part of her WebQuest in hopes to link her inner city kids back to mother nature. Another great one was one that involved learning about Anne Frank, with it based upon the children of the Holocaust. There are no limits to WebQuests. They can be totally done on the computer or you can mix like the pumpkin patch and integrate some real life activity to the Web. The sky is the limit and like one of my professors once told me "Why try and reinvent the wheel?"

Excel

I really think that Excel is a nifty program because it can be used for so many things. So many professions can utilize excel and make it make their life easier. As a teacher it can be used to input grades, chart individuals progress, look at the class' progress as a whole. This can be very useful as a teachers tool. As a teacher you will always know where your students are at and you will always be able to tell them as well. This will even help you personally as a teacher to track how you are doing. This can also show you if most of the class is just not getting it that maybe you should re-evaluate you r teaching strategies. You can also always gage what that student will need so that they might get the grade that they want. Excel is also excellent in it's ability to make calculations for you instead of you sitting there with the calculator trying to figure everything out. This makes life a lot easier. So I definitely recommend using Excel to help organize your business or profession.

On the flip side I wanted to also comment on the assigned article that we were to read this week. I had never really stopped to think about what's the best way to search a topic? Or how credible that source may in fact be. I usually just thought that if a site looked like someones home page then I had better not trust it. Otherwise, if the site looked professional then I usually trusted the content within it. This article gave some great advice on how to search and how not to search for content on the web. It had also listed some great resources for both students and teachers. I in fact found things out like searching for the same subject in different search engines will yield different results.This is why we should pay attention to which search engine we choose for certain content, anyways, the list goes on and on showing how to uncover valid information when trying to research a topic. I found this article very useful especially since I am going into the teaching profession.

Evalutech

This web site seems like a useful web site. The only thing that I did not like about it is the way that it is set up. There is just so much information on it that my eyes hurt to look at everything all over the page.
On another note it is very useful especially to anyone who wants to teach or enhance the learning process. Some of the things that I had stumbled on where lesson plans and intersactive learning games that the children could learn and play with on the computer. To me the lesson plans were great because anytime as a teacher you can get ideas or any other kind of input on how to teach a grade level or subject that info is golden. I was stumbling around the web site and I really liked how you can click on the lesson plans and resources--->then it brings you to topics--->then you can click on whatever subject you are looking for. This area is full of ideas resources and help. It even offers enrichment material for whatever you are looking for. This would be great for parents to use with their children as well. I also thought that the little interactive computer games will also help the children be exposed to technology in the classroom, as well as get them excited about wanting to learn more. Overall this would be an excellent resource to use it has so much information to use and it would definitely enhance your and the students learning experience.