To start, we read a couple of quick articles on video games and their affects on individuals. Oftentimes we hear people talk about how detrimental video games can be for their users. These articles, however, explained that they aren't all negative. There are some positive aspects to video games that are often overlooked. In the article entitled Video Games: Can They Be Educational?, the author points out that there are certain games that are definitely "bad" but there are others that can be used for good. He gives an example of The Sims as a game that can be used in a positive way for students. Since The Sims is made up of simulation activities, students are able to have the autonomy to control their character. Things happen in the game similarly to the way things happen in life. For instance, if you lose your job and can't afford groceries, your "character" will need to look for another one or it will suffer. This can teach students the importance of responsibility while promoting autonomy. Based on this exploration, I think it's important to think twice before immediately focusing on the negative parts of video games. Since many young people like them, it is important to try and find ways to spin them in a positive manner.
After this, we moved on to www.dana.org, which is a great resource for brain research. We explored various articles that dealt with how arts integration in the classroom and throughout development could positively affect individuals. In the article called Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts the Brain, the keynote speech by Dr. Jerome Kagan explained that there are countless reasons why arts should be integrated into the classroom.
Dr. Kagan mentioned that not only does art integration help with physical brain development, but it also helps with how students feel about themselves. He mentioned in the speech that too often, children compare their work with the work of their classmates. If they feel that they are "below" others, they often give up and decide that they are not good at particular subjects. I myself have done this with math classes. As a student, I always thought that English was my best subject and math was my worst, so I focused more on English and treated math as a chore. I wish I could go back and focus more on the positive aspects instead of the negative, just as Dr. Kagan mentioned. If students feel that they are creating art for the sake of art or beauty rather than for the sake of a grade, they are more likely to be less judgemental of themselves and create more freely.
I also learned from the other two articles that we studied on this site some very specific ways to implement the arts into the classroom. I believe, especially after reading these articles, that every teacher should find a way to use arts or music in their classes. One specific part of the article called Arts and Cognition: Findings Hint at Relationships that particularly stood out to me was this: "Correlations exist between music training and both reading acquisition and sequence learning. One of the central predictors of early literacy, phonological awareness, is correlated with both music training and the develompent of a specific brain pathway." This basically means that it is proven that music helps with reading. A simplified way to implement this in the classroom that I plan to use is to have classical music playing during assignments. I also think it would be beneficial to allow students listen to music through earphones while they are reading at their desks. I love to read and listen to music, and why not let students do that, as long as they are staying on task?
This week, we also had a few more Technology Exploration assignments. These were: www.delicious.com, www.historypin.com, www.diigo.com, two different talking calculators, a math WikiSpace, and PicLits.
Delicious
After viewing the Delicious website, I did not feel that
the website was very helpful in explaining the concept of what delicious.com
does. After looking around and reading some reviews of it, I can tell that
Delicious is very similar to Pinterest, in that they are both digital
bookmarking sources.
I am an avid user of Pinterest. I use it every day, and
often multiple times per day. After viewing the Delicious website, I found
that I thought Pinterest was a superior bookmarking site. Though I would not
be opposed to using Delicious, I already have a Pinterest site established
and organized.
I did feel that the Delicious site was more “professional.” Oftentimes Pinterest is filled with tons of visual images, and it is difficult to book mark certain things without an image attached to it. I learned that Delicious might be better at bookmarking text centric passages. |
I can tell that Delicious could be very useful for a
classroom setting. As a teacher, if I set up my own Delicious site, I could
easily curate all the websites or sources that I feel are important for
certain lessons and have them organized in one space divided however I like.
For example, if I were teaching a unit on William Faulkner, I could easily
tag each website on Faulkner that I found relevant and interesting. This
would be a meaningful and useful way to organize my sources. Also, this could
be used particularly for Presentations that use online sources, such as
WebQuests or PowerPoints, so that students could easily click on them to
view.
Delicious could definitely be used in any grade level or
classroom setting, since it is primarily a means of organization for the
teacher, which is another good thing about it.
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I believe I would recommend this to other educators,
especially ones who do not use Pinterest and could have use for an online
bookmarking program. I know lots of men do not use Pinterest because it is
filled with recipes, outfits, and home décor items, so Delicious might be a
good choice for them.
I also think it is fairly easy to use once you get the
hang of it, and it is a great organizational tool. I also like that this
resource is free.
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History Pin
History Pin is a really great concept! I think that this
could definitely become something “big” when the word gets out about this
site more. The first thing that came to my mind is that it would be a great
resource to potentially track down your family’s ancestry, especially since
you can click on a place and time and see images that others have uploaded.
It is a great idea, and I’m surprised someone hasn’t thought of this before
now!
Again, History Pin is similar to Pinterest, except that
this site is only for historical references like photographs, video, and
audio. It is also a little different than Pinterest as users don’t have
“boards” the way they do on Pinterest.
After reading about this source, I feel that it is going
to really gain popularity and momentum as time passes. The more people use
this, the more useful it will become. I was previously an editor at Arcadia
Publishing, which is a historical book publishing house, and this site would
have been extremely useful in that job, as it would be a great place to track
down people who know a lot about the history of their families or towns.
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Another thing that struck me was that this site could be
an incredible resource in a school setting. Like its name says, History Pin
would definitely be useful in a history classroom. It could be used in others
as well such as English classrooms, but I feel that it would best be used in
history classes.
That being said, it could be used in class in many ways.
From researching the website, I saw that various schools have already used
History Pin in a few great ways. One way I think would be neat is to create a
comprehensive project for a history class. You could divide all of your
classes into decades, and have the students in each decade go out into the
community to find individuals with old photographs and historical stories
behind them. Once the students had found the images and stories, they could
be uploaded to HistoryPin, and the town would have a documented history
online. This would be amazing! It would be an awesome thing for the town or
community as a whole, and allow students to have real-life interactions and
help contribute to the greater good.
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I would most definitely recommend History Pin to other
educators. I feel that this resource will really become useful, especially as
time goes along and more and more people contribute to it. As I mentioned
above, it could be a great resource and idea for a comprehensive community
and classroom project that students could spearhead.
I also like that this resource is free and students could
explore it for real life images and recording of certain times in history.
For example, on a lesson on Great Gatsby, students could use History Pin to
view real images from 1920s New York. I really, really like this resource!
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Diigo
Upon exploring this resource, I was unfamiliar with Diigo.
After exploring the website and learning about it, I feel that it could
definitely be a useful tool. Diigo is another means of organization, but this
one is cloud based, and it also allows for users to interact with one another
and collaborate with research.
Mainly, Diigo’s purpose is that it is “a personal research
tool,” “a collaborative research platform,” “a social content site,” and “a
knowledge sharing community.” What Diigo actually does for the user is that
it allows the user to bookmark websites and information that you find useful,
highlight things on websites that you need to remember, collaborate with
others by leaving bookmarks and notations for them, and all of this can be
accessed on any computer.
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Diigo could definitely be useful for a classroom setting,
and for a school setting in that teachers could use it together to help
bounce ideas off each other and bookmark pages that they think would be
useful for other teachers.
As far as a classroom setting goes, Diigo could be really
useful for students who are writing research papers or performing a group
project. For example, if students are completing a project about The Great Gatsby, they could highlight
certain parts of websites that they find useful and need other teammates to
see. They could also bookmark pages that they know will be useful for their
assignment. I also really, really like that the user of Diigo can bookmark
pages and then read them off-line on their iPhones or iPads. This would be so
helpful and beneficial for when you are not in a Wifi zone and don’t want to
use your data on a long article.
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I think I would recommend Diigo to other educators, and I
feel that it would be a useful tool for schools to provide to individual
classrooms or teachers. It is a nice way to keep track of certain websites
and valuable information. I do not know if I would purchase Diigo with my own
dime, though, since it would be more meaningful as a collaborative tool. The
fee of the basic package is $20 per year, and that is not too bad, but I feel
that it would only be worth it if colleagues and students could all have
access to it.
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PBS CyberChase
This website is great, especially for elementary to middle
aged math students. I found through exploring it that there are numerous
activities, games, and math puzzles that the website provides that could be
very useful for teachers and students. I like the graphics on the website,
and I also like the way it is organized with tabs at the top but also through
the “find it” tab that breaks the site down into subjects like fractions,
geometry, math and sports, measurement, and more.
I also thought the bright graphics and clear and easy to
use site was great.
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This resource could most easily be used in elementary to
middle school aged mathematics classes. Teachers could use this source in a
variety of ways, especially since there are so many different subjects on
this source. A teacher, for example, who is teaching measurements could use
this, but so could a geometry teacher. I think it would be a great review
tool for students right after being introducted to a new concept, but it
would also be a good review for students right before an exam. It would be a
fun homework assignment, assuming that your students had access to internet
after school. It would also be a fun group activity, or a way to
differentiate instruction if some students are behind or ahead.
In regards to the talking calculator, this could
definitely be useful in a math class, as well. Oftentimes it helps students
to hear rather than see exactly what they are doing. It could definitely be
implemented into the class, especially for English Language Learners. They
could use this resource to hear how certain numbers and math terms are
pronounced and what they do.
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I would definitely recommend this source to math teachers.
It could be so useful for a math classroom, and a very good resource for them
when they need some specific fun games instead of standard teaching methods
with textbook and notebook. I also think the benefits of having students use
this with its bright colors and graphics would be great since it would draw
them in and make the math problem more of a game. Also, since this resource
is free, there is really no reason not to use it!
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Big Simple Calculator
This resource is basically what it’s title is – it’s a
big, simple, talking calculator. This resource is pretty cut and dry. Users
can download this resource for free and it covers the entire computer screen.
It has customizable tabs that can change color, and the language of the
calculator can be changed as well.
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This resource would be especially beneficial for
classrooms that contain ESL students. For students who are new to English,
they could use the English setting to help learn the pronunciation of numbers
and math terms. They could also use the Spanish or their certain language
setting to complete the problems if they needed to.
I could also see how this calculator could be helpful for
students with certain disabilities. For example, for a student who has
difficulty hearing or seeing, they could use this resource to listen to the
words or to see the large numbers. It would be very beneficial for these
students.
It could also be projected onto a screen for whole-class
instruction so that students could see a large version of what to the teacher
is doing. Instead of walking around and showing students individually, the
teacher could use this for helping with entire class instruction.
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I do think I’d recommend this to other educators,
especially ones who teach math. This resource, though simple, could be useful
in the instances above. It is clearly easy to use as well as free, which is
definitely a positive aspect of it.
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Writing Accross the Curriculum: Mathematics WikiSpace
This resource is a great example of a successful use of a
WikiSpace. The site is broken down into organizational tools on the right
hand side of the page that has resources like “Teacher Tool Box” and
“Standards in Math.” The homepage explains what the WikiSpace is about, which
is “Writing Across the Curriculum: Mathematics.”
I read over the site, and I definitely believe that the
content of the site is useful and meaningful. The objectives of the space is
to explain the importance of combining writing in mathematics classes as well
explain the types of writing that could be used in math classes. I had heard
of the concept of writing across the curriculum before, but I liked learning
about concrete examples of how to implement this in the classroom.
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This resource could definitely be beneficial in a school
setting, as it is a great resource for math teachers. A teacher could use
this resource when planning to implement more writing into his or her
classroom. For example, this resource gives specific examples of writing that
should take place in math classes. These are journals or logs, solving math
problems, explaining mathematical ideas, general math writing, and creative
math writing. Each section explains in detail simple ways of adding this to
math lessons. One that I liked reading about is the example they used in
which students wrote poems about math. Not only does this hone their English
skills, but it also allows for them to think about the math subject that they
are currently studying.
These techniques are important and can be used in any type
of math class and with any age student. Teachers could resort back to this
WikiSpace when they need new ideas or resources in regards to this subject.
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I would recommend this to other teachers, as I believe
that writing across the curriculum is a very important concept in and of
itself. For math teachers, this resource could be invaluable in that it could
serve as a free and useful resource for new ideas on how to implement this in
classrooms.
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Pic Lits
I really like the concept of Pic Lits. I think that as a
(soon to be) English teacher, I could definitely use this in my classroom
often. The website explains that the
resource is made to “inspire users to write, express themselves, and share
their work with others.” The site is a safe environment that does not allow
just anyone to upload images, so it is guaranteed that students will not come
across any inappropriate material.
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I know that I will use Pic Lits in my own English
classroom. I like that it allows for creativity and it combines a nice image
with the student’s own words. It can be as complex or as simple as the user
wants to make it. There are tons of images and words to choose from, so the
user can definitely find something that they like or that they find
interesting and relevant to what they are doing.
I think a good way to implement this into the classroom
would be to have students use it when learning about haikus or poetry. They
could choose an image that inspires them, and then write a poem over it. It
could also serve as a nice introduction or photograph for a presentation or
at the beginning of a creative writing paper. There are really endless
possibilities with this one since it allows for so much creativity.
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I would recommend this to others, and I will also use it
in my classroom. First of all, it is free. Secondly, it allows for both
autonomy and creativity for each student, which are two of the most important
factors of teaching and learning, in my opinion. It is self-explanatory and
easy to use, and it allows users to save their work or email it. It would be
a fun thing to display on the class website.
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The Web 2.0 tool that I chose to explore was something I found called Crocodoc. The website can be found here: https://crocodoc.com/get-started/. I think that this tool is amazing, and though I do not have a classroom yet, I will definitely use it when I do.
The thing that I like most about Crocodoc is that the user is able to download any type of document and allow the user to interact with it. Though it does other things as well, the most appealing to include:
"- Collaboratively add and reply to comments on shared documents
- Take notes when collecting research
- Fill out forms and submit requested paperwork
- Send colleagues feedback on presentations.."
As an English teacher, one of the most important resource I can have at my fingertips is an easy to use document editing resource. This is important to me for a number of reasons. If I am working on grading or editing papers at school, I want to be able to save my work and continue it from home. I don't want to have to deal with tons of different hard copies and keeping track of certain drafts that students turn in.
With Crocodoc, this cuts out the unncessary hard copies of the paper work almost completely. With Crocodocs, I can upload students papers and edit them via Crocodocs by using their highlight, arrows, and comment tools. Then, I can share it with the student or studnets on our classroom database, and they can go in and complete their edits.
I love, love, love that I would be able to complete this work on an iPad or my work computer or my home computer or even potentially my iPhone if I got in a bind. The flexibility would be great, and it would be so helpful to have it all consolidated into one space.
Secondly, I focus a lot on being "green" as much as I can. I want to instill that notion in my students, as well, and have them try to cut down on unneccesary printing. With Crocodocs, since it is all online, there is no need to print out multiples drafts over and over for editing. Instead, it is all done on the computer, and the paper usage can be saved for the final draft. Crocodocs helps with this, too.
The Crocodocs website is clear, clean, and easy to use. It is also free (up to a point), so I could use this in my classroom without having to pay a fee. This makes it even more of a positive. I will definitely use this Web 2.0 tool in the future.
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