TeacherTube

  
For this week I explored an online resource for teachers called teachertube.  I saw that one of the other groups was looking at schooltube or something like that and it reminded me of the teachertube website.  I was first introduced to this website when one of my other professors showed us a video that she had uploaded to the site.  It was for music in the elementary classroom so she also showed us one other popular video on the site that used a rap to teach fractions or something like that. 
This site contains many different kinds of resources that teachers have created to share with other teachers.  There are videos, word documents, powerpoints, photos, and channels.  There was also something called teacher resources but the link was not working when I clicked on it.  It might have been because I did not sign in as a member of the site. 
This is a great site because teachers can use it to find some many great resources that already made.  For example you may want to find a more creative way to teach a subject to your class. Maybe a majority of the students in your class are really into music so you want to teach a topic they are struggling with by using a song or rap to help them remember it, but you dont feel like you can write one on your own.  This site would be a great place to look for something like  a song on a topic and much more. 

Rubistar

I don’t know how many people of have heard of rubistar before, but it’s an online tool that can be used to make rubrics for class projects.  I first learned about the tool in one of my other education classes, however, I didn’t really get a chance to check it out yet so I decided to look more in to the tool for this week’s class. 

From my experience with the tool this so far it seems to be really simple and easy to use.  You can either make your own rubric from scratch or you can choose a premade template based on the type of project you are assessing.  Some examples would be posters, lab reports, writing, oral presentations, art projects, and much more.  If you pick and already made rubric you still have a lot of choice in what goes into the rubric you pick the areas of which you wish to assess and then the tool gives you suggestions for how to asses each category.  If you don’t like the criteria or the amount of points that the tool suggests you can change it to what will work best for your class.    

I think this is a great to tool for first time teachers to know about.  It’s quick and easy to use.  After you pick all the criteria or type the information in yourself it creates the chart for you which is great because you don’t have to try and mess around in word or some other program trying to get everything to fit just right.  You could even have students create their own rubrics based on what they feel they should be assessed on.  This tools is also great because once you have a log in you can safe your created rubrics on the site as well.  For what I can tell this tool makes creating and using rubrics fast, simple and easy.  Using a rubric in general for assessing student work is also good for the students because everything is laid out and they now what is expected of them.  I also believe having students complete projects that can be assessed with something like a rubric is a much better way of assessing students knowledge than by using a test.      

Webquest.org

For this week Lisa and I are exploring the use of webquests in the classroom.  I first learned about webquests last week when I had to do complete a website review for my social studies in the elementary classroom class.  Webquest.org was one of the sites that my professor suggested that we looked into when completing our review.  While I was completing my review the different information that was available on these sites caught my eye and I wanted to learn more about it so that is why I choose to look more into webquests for this week. 

Webquests are basically online lessons designed by teachers for students to explore a topic more in depth on the internet on their own.  A webquest is set up so that it introduces a topic to the student, the student is then given a task to complete, and there are steps given to complete this task.  The teacher can also link word documents that they want the student to use and provides other web links for the students to explore. 

This great for the elementary classroom because children at this age don’t always have the skills they need to explore and research a topic on their own.  A webquest allows them to explore a topic but still have the freedom to look at different sites to gain the information needed like they would if they were doing research completely on their own.  I think webquests would be great to use during center time as a computer center or you could use webquests as an option to do when students finish other work early.

Even though here I mainly focused on how to use them in the elementary classroom webquests are created by teacher of all grades.  On the site you can search for what webquest that will work with a topic that you have in mind or create your own.  In a high school classroom you could even use these as an alternative homework assignment.  For more information about what makes a good webquest and to look at one looks like check out webquest.org.      

Google Docs

Lisa and I selected the tool Google Docs to explore for next class.  We still have some investagting to do with the tool, however, so far we found that you can upload lesson plans, as well search for other lesson plans that other teachers of posted.  This can be very helpful for us a new teachers because it's always good to see how other teachers are teaching a certain subject and to share what you are doing too.  We also found templates where you can make quizes for your students.  We still have to explore the quiz making template alittle farther we started to make more of a survey type quiz, but then were having trouble finishing it and making it so that we could actually use it, so we still have to play around with this a little more.  This tool could be very helpful though  because it allows you to create a spreadsheet of the results from the quizes.  We still have to do some more exploring before Tuesaday, but this is what we found so far. 

I believe that people in the real world learn mostly through experience.  We learn through many different experiences.  It could be the experience of reading something in the newspaper or in a magazine.  It could also be the experience of watching someone else do something and then either following their lead or doing the opposite.  I know I personally learn a lot from watching what other people do.  However, I think we learn most from our own hands on/active experiences.  For example, think of something you learned to do as a child.  I’m going to use the example of riding a bike.  I didn’t learn how to ride a bike only by someone telling me what to do or by simply watching some else do it.  In order to really learn how to ride a bike I had to try it out for myself and maybe I didn’t get it right the very first time and that was okay.  Now even though I haven’t road a bike in years, I know I could get on a bike and still now how to ride it because I was actively involved in learning how to do this.  The point I’m trying to make is people learn best through activities they experience for themselves, so it should be our job as teachers to find/create activities that allow students to learn through their own experience, since this is a primarily the way we learn outside of school. 

In today’s world, where technology can be assessed easily at all times of the day, I think we rely on it a lot to learn.  We use it to answer questions that arise during a conversation.  I don’t know how many times I have been having a conversation with someone and someone asks question, and the other person will say that‘s a good question let me look it up on my phone. We use search engines to answer almost any question one can think of.  We also use technology to learn/ catch up on what our friends are doing in their lives through social networking.  Technology today is used to learn for a variety of topics ranging from what the weather forecast is going to be to actual research.  The two articles that really stuck out to me when preparing to write this blog were the quotes page and the New Literacy article that suggested that students writing might actually be improving since we live in a world where everyone is always communicating through “text”.  The author seems to think that this is enhancing students writing, however, if you read the comments left by readers of the blog most of them seem to not agree.  I thought that the author might actually have a valid point.  While many people see technology as hindering to the 21 century learner, I don’t see that as true as long as it is used in the proper ways.  Students today may feel that they are better able to express their thoughts through writing/typing since it is something almost every student does when they go home from school.  So we as teachers need to find technology resources that will enhance our students learning, through the technology they already use.  I especially liked this quote from flickr, “We must do more than teach students to surf the NET.  We must also teach them HOW TO MAKE WAVES.” --Scheiderman,   http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlaarena/5220177397/in/pool-858082@N25.  I think this quote basically speaks for its self, but it’s something I want to try and an do as a teacher. 

Teaching and Learning Reflections

I believe great teaching and learning happens when the lesson is hands on and is meaningful to the students.  Great teaching also happens when the teacher is able to make personal connections for the students threw what they are learning.  For example one of my most memorable teaching experiences happened last semester in my field placement.  I was in a third grade classroom, and as soon as my students learned that I lived on a dairy farm they became very interested and had many questions they wanted to ask me about living on a farm.  During this experience I had the opportunity to teach a lesson.  The students were learning about magnetism in science class so I decided to teach a lesson on the uses of magnets on a dairy farm.  On a dairy farm magnets are used to keep metal pieces from getting into the cows feed and if a cow does swallow metal they are given a magnetic pill that collects the metal in the cow’s stomach so that the metal does not harm the cow.  I taught a hands on lesson on this topic by bringing in plastic bags full of cow feed that also contained metal pieces.  Then it was the students’ job to place the magnetic pill into the bag and find out what metal objects the cow had “swallowed”.  The students had so much fun doing this and I think it really allowed them to see how the magnet worked, and the importance of it for the cow’s health.  I believe this lesson was successful because it was hands on which allowed the students to be actively involved in the material they were learning.  It was also meaningful to them because it connected what they had been learning in class about magnets to the real world situation.  The lesson also grabbed their attention because they were already interested in activities that take place on a farm.  My own learning experiences throughout school that stand out to me were also often taught in a hands on way.  I can still remember a project that I did in fourth grade on the planet mars.  I can still picture what it looked like and even some of the facts that I had to include.  I can remember this project so well because I was actively involved in what I was learning. 

I also believe that in order for great teaching and learning to happen the teacher must have a positive attitude and really love what he or she is doing.  The teacher also has to be willing to get to know his or her students at a personal level so that the teacher can prepare activities that relate to the interests of the class.  As a teacher I am going to strive to make learning real for my students so they can make real world and personal connects with the information they are learning.        

practice blog

This is my first post, just to see how this works.