Sunday, February 22, 2009

Web Tools

After exploring the web tools for a while, the two that I came upon are two that I was familiar with prior to this class, but are also two that I feel I would use in a classroom setting. I chose to look at YouTube and Shutterfly.

YouTube is an online video-sharing website where users can upload videos to share with other people. There are videos on everything from political speeches to home videos. In the classroom, videos on YouTube could be used to supplement research projects on famous people in history. There are lots of videos of famous speeches, readings of works of literature of famous writers and playwrights, and documentary pieces. The only risk in using YouTube is that much teacher control would have to be used in order to assure that students did not access videos that are inappropriate for school.

Shutterfly is an online photo sharing website where individual photos can be uploaded or slide shows can be made of special events. These photos and slide shows can be shared with other internet users and other people can even purchase photos directly from the Shutterfly site. This would be a great tool to use in the classroom to share photos with families after special school events or field trips. With a large percentage of working families, there are many family members who cannot always attend special events, but by using Shutterfly, families can see photos and purchase them if the want to.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Leon M Peterson
Spreadsheet
Spreadsheet Blog
The spreadsheet was built for grading students reading tests and homework. It was built for the teacher rather than the students. The teacher can easily look up a student’s grade and track his/her progress. Teachers use this type of spreadsheet for parent teacher conferences, setting grades and use for talking one on one with their students. They also use this type of spreadsheet for who has turned in assignments and who is missing assignments.
For Students to see where they stand within their own classroom I would use a more general spreadsheet breaking it up into three categories the above average, average, and lower tier students. So students wouldn’t know where other students placed in the class.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Instructional Situation
Leon M Peterson
Chapter 5
I think of research projects when it comes to using computers, web based information, and the traditional way of looking up information, libraries. I think of middle school and high school students looking up information on a history project dealing with great leaders from around the world. Students could choose any such person like Napoleon, Rosa Parks, or Martin Luther King Jr. and write a persuasive paper on why there person is great. Setting the guidelines is what changes this simple assignment from a sixth grade level to a twelfth grade level. Starting with a sixth grade assignment the teacher would set the paper length at three pages doubled spaced with a fourth page for work cited. Introduce APA or MLA style writing and documentation. At least two different types of references for their work cited page. Pass out an example paper or give them a website that they can go to for example papers that they can read and work with when writing there own. The student’s audience would be their peers and the teacher. The paper would be a general question of why do you think that your person that you chose was a great leader? What problem, trouble, conflict around them made them who they are? Tie them together to convince your audience that your person was indeed a great leader.

The objectives of this assignment would to introduce MLA or APA styles or writing and documentation. Continue to strengthen research skills with computers base programs, Internet search engines, understanding what a legitimate web source is and what isn’t legitimate.
Materials would consist of the student’s textbook Internet and books from the library used for the research. Rationale for this type of assignment would be to strengthen the student’s writing, reading, and research skills.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Leon M Peterson
EDU 1191-91
Ch 3-Visuals

In our reading, the book discusses various types of visuals. The type of visual used should be chosen based on the learning task. Visuals can be divided into six categories: realistic, analogical, organizational, relational, transformational, and interpretive. As educators, we have many options to choose from.

The first type of visual is a realistic visual. This refers to a visual that is the actual object being studied. For example, if a teacher is teaching a lesson on penguins, he/she would show pictures of actual penguins. Students are able to see, first hand, what the penguin looks like and its unique characteristics. Some people caution against overuse of realistic visuals, however, as they may lead to interference in the learning of some students.

The next type of visual, analogical visuals, express an idea by presenting something else and implying similarity. To demonstrate how bacteria can spread in a person with an illness, a biology teacher may drop a few droplets of colored water onto a paper towel and watch the colored water spread across the paper, as the bacteria would do inside a person’s body.

The third type of visual introduced in the text is organizational visuals, which demonstrate the “qualitative relationships among various elements”. Flowcharts and timelines are often used in this type of visual. A History teacher might use an organizational visual to help students sequence the events and battles of the American Revolution.

Another type of visual is a relational visual. Closely related to organizational visuals, graphs and charts are also used in the relational visual, except that this time, information is being related to other information to demonstrate an idea. A Kindergarten teacher might use a pie chart to demonstrate weather to his/her class. Students could look at the chart and easily see that there are more snowy days in February than there are in May in the state of Minnesota.

The next type of visual is the transformational visual. In this type of visual, some sort of change over time is demonstrated. An example of this would be an animation of the life cycle. This demonstrates to the students how different elements and events in the life cycle occur in sequence and change overtime to reach a certain end result and begin over again to complete and continue the cycle.

The final type of visual discussed in the text is the interpretive visual. In this type of visual, theoretical or abstract relationships are illustrated. An example of an interpretive visual would be a diagram of a parallel circuit of electricity, showing the viewer that there are various different paths that the electricity can take so that the circuit continues to flow. This type of visual helps students begin to understand processes that couldn’t be seen otherwise. imply