Webquest Reflection

I thought that my webquest was well organized and made it easy for students to understand the assignment and view the resources easily. I wish I had more money for this project, when a teacher has a lot of funds, it usually helps out a lot and makes the learning experience even better. I thought that the planning sheet really helped. I usually procrastinate and since it made me plan what I was going to do in the future, it made the process a whole lot easier when it came time to actually do it. I thought the peer evaluation was fun. I loved seeing what others had done and their creative ideas! I am really glad that we had this assignment, I didn't even know that webquests existed before this class. The Zunal program made it a lot easier and had a great format that is really teacher friendly. I would recommend it to anyone.

WEBQUEST!!!!

Here is the link to my completed Webquest. ENJOY!!!! http://zunal.com/teacherspage.php?w=58452

Geometry Stuff....

Today in class we learned all about photoshopping. It was great fun walking around taking some photos. It was even more fun learning about how to edit them and make them cooler. Comic life was really cool and made it really easy to edit images and add cool graphics. I think this activity could be relevant in the classroom, this would be a really fun lesson with students who are a bit older.

Web Application

Today in class, we searched for useful web applications that we could use in our classrooms. I was looking for ones that were both educational and really fun. For math I found a really great website at funschool.kaboose.com. There was a game called balloon popper, where they give you addition and subtraction problems and the answer is in one of the balloons that are blowing up, but you have to find the answer before it pops!

I found a great science website at www.ed.heads.org. There is a game where you play a weather woman or man, and have to put the right sign for the forecast on the weather board. It was really educational and I think that kids will really like it.

I think that these go under multiple standards, the first being Standard 1 in Educational Technology, for the math game it would go under Standard 1 for Second Grade Math. And for the Science game, it would go under Standard 1 for Fourth Grade Math.

Webquest Ideas

Today we were introduced to our new project. We will be creating an interactive lesson through creating a webquest page. I think this is a great idea to for elementary teachers if they want a fresh, new way to teach a subject. I am in the 5th grade right now in my practicum. Every 5th grade classroom has to do a state report, so i thought that it would be a good idea to base my webquest page on this. I want assign every student one of the states. The requirements will be to write a one page report on their state, find a famous person from their state and write a few facts on that famous person, and to draw a map of their state, and a picture of their famous person. These are just ideas, so I will most likely change and add different ones while I think about it more.

Website Evaluations

Today in class we learned a lot about Websites and their information. There are many websites that are unreliable since websites can be written by anyone at anytime, and the information does not have to be correct. We looked at a few that were crazy.

We also looked at some educational websites and looked at some website evaluations. While looking over the evaluations I personally liked the Kathy Schrock guide. It is made especially for teachers and you can even choose the level of education that you are teaching at. It was clear and concise in the website questions. All of the questions were yes or no questions which is always nice. I liked the question asking if the spelling was correct on the page. It is a huge pet peeve of mine when things are spelt incorrectly when something is supposed to be professional.

I evaluated the Smithsonian website. I thought it was really good. I used the Kathy Schrock guide, and answered all the questions with positive answers toward the website. I also did the Wave on the Smithsonian website, and it didn't find ANY areas in the entire website, which I found pretty amazing. This was a good activity to see which websites will be good for our future classrooms!

All About Spreadsheets

Today we learned all about spreadsheets. It was really helpful. I have never been good at Spreadsheets and to go over simple exercises was a good review. The type of things that we learned are the type of things that I would use in my classroom.

These Spreadsheets will be perfect for recording test scores, homework and stuff like that. I also think this would be a good thing for the older grades to learn. A lot of people use Spreadsheets these days and it is becoming a necessary skill to have in

the working world. Having to learn these skills at an early age would be really good.

We also went to Google Docs and learned about the spreadsheets there. It is nice to know that it is free which is always nice. They were both really similar to each other, but I think I like Excel a little better. But overall today was really informative and I am

excited to use the things I learned today in my future classroom.

Copyright!

Today in class we went over Copyright laws. I thought this was really important because as a teacher it is kind of a gray area as to what is legal to use and what is not. One of the most important things that I learned today was Fair Use. I didn't even know that this existed. It's really good to know that as a teacher I can use websites and their materials without having to worry about copyright laws. I think that this is such a good thing, because there are so many materials out there that normally teachers would not be able to use. But thankfully our nation thinks the education of our children is more important than copyright laws. There are still limitations under the Fair Use though. And as teachers we have a responsibility that we are using our materials legally.

Overall, I am really glad that we learned about Copyright laws today. I was so unsure about what was okay and what wasn't. The case studies that we did in groups was really helpful in deciding what was legal and what wasn't. I will definitely be implementing the things I learned today into my future classroom.

YETC

Today we had a tour of the YETC Resource Center. I thought it was really interesting. My favorite part of the tour was when he was showing us a few of the websites that are good to incorporate into a classroom. I thought that spelling website he showed us was awesome. I think kids would love this. You are playing games while practicing your spelling words; how much better can it get? This class has definitely opened my eyes to all of the resources that are out there for educators. I can't wait to use them in my own classroom someday.

I also thought that it was so cool that the YETC is the only computer lab in Utah that has the NASA program. They have SO many cool resources that could really get students excited about math and science.

Another program that he showed us was called Stillaruim. It was seriously so cool. It had a feature showed all the star constellations. I think that students would love this. There were also different landscapes that you could go to, one of them including Mars. The program also had a tracker where you put in any town or place in the world and it points exactly where it is it; including the longitude and latitude. I thought this place would be perfect for students because it is exciting, fun and really interesting!

Using UEN in the Classroom

Today in class we learned about all the resources that the UEN website can offer. One of my favorite features was the tool to help make lesson plans. It was really convenient that it provided that standards and objectives for you, along with sample lesson plans. As a teacher, where so much time is dedicated to planning lessons, this will be one of the most useful resources out there! I am really excited to become more familiar with the website and use it to my advantage.

Blogging In The Classroom

I think that blogging in the classroom is a great idea. I think as a teacher I would use blogging as another way to incorporate writing. And with blogging being on the computer, you are implementing computer skills and writing skills at the same time. I think that writing is one of the most important subjects in school, and to incorporate writing in a different way would definitely get the students more excited about it.

Another possible way that I would blogging would be to post ideas that I have used in my classroom, that have turned out successful. I could also get ideas from other teacher's blogs. The internet is a great place, and can be a great place for learning for teachers and students.