WEB QUEST

Here is the link to my web quest that I created. I based it off of the second grade standard 2, objective 2, indicator a: explain why families, schools, and communities have rules. This is the link to my webquest:

http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:9961

Digital Cameras!

I really liked being able to go take pictures using the digital cameras. I liked using the comic life program and I think it is an easy to use program. I think there are many ways that you can use cameras in your classroom. Like this assignment with geometry, I think the students could also have an assignment to take pictures of insects, animals, plants, weather/clouds, and different colors or buildings. I think that in the elementary classroom it would be important to have the children paired off and to set boundary limits so that no one wandered off or got lost. I liked working collaboratively in pairs and I think it would be a good experience for the students. You could also check out the cameras and allow the students to take the cameras home to take pictures of their home environment. They could make a presentation about their life and share it with the rest of the class.
I liked using photoshop and I think it has a lot of interesting tools that are fun to use but I think that program is a little too complex for the younger grades.

educational software

I want to teach any of the younger grades of kindergarten to third grade. One of the 3rd grade standards is understanding the relationship between the force applied to an object and the resulting motion of the object. I really liked exploring on phunland.com. I feel that with some help and assistance, the students would be able to explore this property on this program. i feel that this program's content is very appropriate, but it is not as easy to use. This program is not one that is very easy to figure out right off, it is not self explanatory. Although it is not easy to use at first, with help I feel the students could explore this program.
The mars quest link was also very interesting. I liked how the pictures were very realistic, and gave you a good opportunity to explore. It was fun and easy to use. This program would be helpful in teaching the 3rd grade science standard 1 of understanding the shape of Earth and the moon are spherical and how they rotate.

webquest objective and task

My standard is for second grade where they will explore the traditions, music, dances, artwork, poems, rhymes, and stories that distinguish cultures. I'm going to do a webquest that focuses on different cultures throughout the world.

For my objective the students will be exploring Mexico and the culture of the people who live there. They will focus on the traditions, music, dances, and artwork of this culture.

My task will be preparing for a student who is coming to the class who is from Mexico. As a class, what do we need to be aware of and understand about the Mexican culture to help this new student feel welcome in the class? If we were to travel to Mexico and go to a school there, what would we need to be aware of.

This will help the students because with demographic changes, this is something the children need to be aware of, and will be part of their life.

webquest

Part of the second grade core is to describe traditions, music, artwork, rhymes, and stories that distinguish cultures. I am going to be going to El Salvador so one of my webquest ideas is to focus on the cultural background of El Salvador. Some of the tasks could be things like what kind of music would you be listening to in this country, what would you need to take with you if you were going here, and different scenarios about this culture.

Another part of the core is weather so I was also thinking I could do a webquest on weather. There could be tasks such as how to prepare for certain weather situations (hurricane, tsunami, tornado). Some of the scenarios could be how people, plants, and animals would react to these extreme weather conditions and how they could prepare.

web evaluations

My web evaluations would not attach, but the main problem I found with websites I went to was that many times a author or creator was very difficult to find. One of the sites it wasn't listed. I thought it was interesting that some of the evaluations asked about whether or not the pictures on the site had a purpose, the site I was on they did but I had never considered that that would be important. After looking at the final evaluations, I felt that most of the web sites were very good, had useful information and they were reliable.

website evalutaion

After learning about how to evaluate websites and evaluating some sites using the evaluation forms provided helped in checking the websites I visited. I felt that the evaluation form from the discovery education (http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/evalelem.html) was the most useful becuase I liked that I was able to type in my answers right into the form. The others were okay but they were a hassle to try and type in the information because I had to save it as a word document to be able to write in them. Since they are evalutaing websites it makes sense that you should be able to fill out the form electronically and I felt like it took more effort than it was worth for the forms that were not easy to fill in.

I did not discover any hidden secrets about the websites from the forms and sometimes the forms were not effective for the types of sites I was visiting. I think that some of the questions on the web site evaluation form helped you realize what is important for web sites to have so there is some value in using a form.

I think if you are doing some research it would be good to have a formal evaluation form so you make sure the sources you are using are reliable. I wouldn't use a formal evaluation for visiting a school website because I feel that it is easy to tell if those sites are reliable and it is not necessary to go through the process of filling out a form.

I think that teaching students about how to find reliable sources is very important. Students need to realize that everything they find on the internet is not reliable. Letting them explore to find reliable and not so reliable websites would be helpful in letting them see the different types of sites that you can visit. Finding reliable sources is very important in citing sources.

excel

Part of the first grade math standards is collecting and interpreting data. I think that the google doc surveys would be a fun way for students to collect data from their peers. It would then be neat to be able to put the information together on an excel chart to view their information. I thought that the google surveys were really easy to use and I like how it formats it for you. Because of this I think it would be user friendly for the younger grades. The excel program was a little more difficult to use and I think that the students would need a little extra help. With the extra help, I think the charts that you can make on excel would be a good way to represent the data and give the students a visual. Excel would be a great way to provide visuals for math lessons, I just wish it was a little more user friendly. I might use the google excel program instead because it was a little easier to use.

Collaborative Stories

WORD
It was Friday the 13th and when Bob woke up he knew something was wrong. His cat was sitting restlessly in the windowsill rather than curled up at his feet, tail erect and fur on end. He was staring out the window at something outside. Out of his throat he emitted the most eery sound. “Happy Valentine’s Day!” my cat said. I screamed in horror. I hated Valentines Day. It reminded me of love long lost, and people who hated me; that was why I had a cat, to avoid people. I hate people. But more importantly than my disgust for people, why and how is my cat talking? Something has got to be wrong. It must have been my stepping on my old mirror my grandmother gave me at the strike of midnight, the night before. I had no idea what was going to happen; however, I was not excited to find out. Forgetting my fear, I got dressed and ready for the day, luckily with no tragic accident. As I walked slowly to the bus on the way to school I realized that as bad as the day might be I must move on. I was just going to have to force myself to make the best of the day.

GOOGLE DOC
Friday the 13th, is supposed to be very scary. I tend to be a very superstitious person, usually to the point of sleeping the whole day of the 13th. Sometimes, I wonder what I'm thinking and feel like I'm just being stupid. But today I was unexpectedly awoken by a screeching sound on my window! This screeching sound scared the tar out of me. I hid my head under the covers, shaking in my polka dotted pajamas. I tried to ignore it, but it continued. So I threw on my big snow boots and trudged out my door. "What is that?" I wondered, everything was a blur so I ran back in to grab glasses. This glass had disappearing tendencies so I could walk around and hit people and they wouldn't know it was me. It may not be the same thing, but my superstitiousness got the best of me, and as my glasses fell to the stone cold ground, they shattered. I cursed under my breath in a whisper and blindly began moving my hands over the ground; screaming as the glass shards cut into my flesh and I began to bleed. As frustrated as I now was, I had to find out what had been making screeching sounds on my window, partially blind and bleeding. I decided that I would go around my house with my huge machete just in case anyone or anything came after me. As I was creepily crawling around my house, I stumbled across something, leaving a giant goose egg in the middle of my forehead. Again, I cursed, this time out loud, mumbling even more as I felt the blood from my hands smear across my forehead. Maybe this unknown creature was too much for me to handle alone. I am going to phone a friend, maybe Joshua will be able to protect me. He is big and intimidating. The only problem I faced now, was finding my phone, which was inside somewhere, nearly impossible to find during my bloody, blinding mess. I blindly half-crawled toward my door, leaving a bloody handprint on the white paint and began my fruitless search for said phone. I jumped awake and turned on the lamp next to my bed. As blood dripped off my fingers I realized I had a bloody nose, and apparently had had a horrible dream.

word and google doc

Today as we experimented with the word documents we each added sentences to creates stories.  This was really fun and it was entertaining to read after we were done.  I think that this would be a fun activity for a classroom.  Sometimes it's hard to be creative, but when working with others and collaborating, it's easier to be creative.  I think that collaborative writing is a great way to get children excited about writing.  I also liked using the google doc.  It was a little confusing at first but I like that you can continually edit and change the  document.  Google docs is an easy way to work on assignments without continually saving different drafts and then emailing the people you are working with. 

The one downside to using this collaborative writing is that I plan on teaching younger children who would not be able to do this without a lot of help.  It is hard for them to write their own stories and I don't think they would understand how to write a sentence that has to do with the sentence that was written before.  For the older grades, I would find this activity very useful and fun.  

I think that in the younger grades a way you could use word documents would be to have the children write stories first and then have the chance to type up their story. The classes that I have been in the children don't know how to type yet so typing a whole story would be very difficult, but they could type one or two sentences, and then maybe print it off and draw a picture to go with it. I would still want to use word in the younger grades because when it is typed I think it would be more meaningful to them.

Lesson Plan 1

I did my first lesson plan using the UEN website for a 3rd grade class. It is a science lesson on gravity using the state Standard 4, Objective 2, Indicator a: compare how the motion of an object rolling up or down a hill changes with the incline of the hill.

http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=22774

For this lesson I used the PHUN program. I went and explored on this program and I feel that it is a fun, yet educational way to explore physics topics, such as gravity.

I liked writing this lesson plan and I like how UEN has the format for the lesson ready but I didn't like how it wouldn't let me format each individual part of the lesson such as putting in bullets or paragraphs.

YETC

Today as we took a tour of the YETC, I became more interested in using the resources available in the lab. I really like the program phun (http:www.phunland.com/wiki/Home). I downloaded this program and started to explore how to use it. I think that it is a really neat program and I feel like this type of technology is more of the type of technology that I would like to use in my classroom. I like the technology that gives you the opportunity to explore on your own and I think that children really like having the opportunity to figure things out by themselves.

Another program that we learned about today was stellarium (www.stellarium.org). I feel that websites like this that allow you to explore the environment are really exciting for children. This website could be used to learn about stars and constellations and then the students could look outside at night to then find the stars they learned about on the program. I feel that a great way to connect technology into the classroom is to connect it to their lives and I want to find more progams that can be used to help children do this.

uen

I feel that uen is a very helpful website because you can find all of the core curriculum standards in one place.  I think that this will be easy to use when making a lesson plan because they have lesson plan ideas, along with all the state standards on the website.  It is helpful that it has links to websites like pioneer so that you can just log onto uen and have all the links you need to find resources for your lesson plans.  I like that uen makes it so you don't have to look up a lot of different websites.  You can find almost all of the resources you could want to use to make a lesson plan on one website.  This will be helpful in making a lesson plan because it has the basic form set up and you just have to enter in the information.  I think that as you explore uen more, you can find good lesson ideas and share your ideas with other teachers.

not only the internet

Students are becoming more and more visual learners and enjoy learning at a fast pace.  I feel that technology is a great way to keep up with these children and to help them learn in ways that are interesting to them.  Besides using the internet, I feel that using cameras in the classroom would appeal to children.  If children were able to take pictures or even make videos and then share them with the class, I think that they would be more excited to learn.  Working on projects like these can help children to work collaboratively.  Children love being trusted to use these resources and they would enjoy being able to create videos.  Projects like these help the children to express themselves and in a generation that is very knowledgeable on technology, using it in the classroom will only help you to be a better teacher.

Blogs

I have never used a blog before, but after learning about them I feel that they would be a great resource for me to use as a future teacher.  I want to teach the younger grades, and possibly even preschool, so I had never considered using technology in the classroom that much before.  After learning about blogs, I feel that even for the younger grades it would be a great way for students to be able to express themselves.  So many children today use technology on a regular basis and they would be interested in being able to create their own blog and being able to post some assignments or interesting facts they have learned in class.  Even though using blogs is a great idea, I am still a little hesitant where I am not that confident in using blogs.  I feel that it would be very important to first teach children about safety online and to help them know that it is not safe to post some information on the internet.  With children who are so used to using technology everyday I feel that helping students use blogs would appeal to their interests and would make learning fun for them!