POST 6

I think the use of Web 2.0 technologies in K-12 education is very useful because that leads to what is used in the real world. Students will see and learn an idea of what they will be working with for probably the rest of their lives; within school, work and home. It is also helpful for teachers to teach the students more effectively. The use of technologies makes more interesting lectures and more organized homework, tests and grading.

I think Wikipedia is an ok learning for resource for something that is not that important or for teaching purposes. Because anyone can add anything to Wikipedia, it is not a reliable learning resource. Teachers should not rely on Wikipedia for facts to teach in the classroom. People use Wikipedia all the time for personal use, which I think is fine, but not when it comes to teaching.

Although I was out of class last week, I think powerpoint is very useful for making lecture presentations. It is sometimes difficult for students to pay attention to just a teacher standing up at the classroom talking, so when the teacher can incorporate fun and interactive presentaions, students pay more attention. I think I would use powerpoints as the main lecture tool in the classroom; and also throughout school for presentations.

post # 5

I think the Internet can be useful to support student research but it also has flaws because it can cause students to become lazy when doing research and also put together false information since anyone can put anything on the internet. The internet is useful when being used for part of the research from a ligitament site, not all of the research and not from bogus sites. It is also not appropriate for students to copy and paste articles off the internet as their own.

I might use web-based resources to support student learning by blogging with other teachers and finding new lesson plan and activity ideas. I could also do research on any kind of small learning disability a student might have and ways to work with him / her. Finding other teacher's and their ideas would be extremely helpful especially for first year teachers. I like the blogging websites for teachers and lesson plans generated from serach engines.

I am concerned about students becoming lazy and plagerizing. Also, that students may be misinformed and therefor use the incorrect information in their work which would teach them something wrong and also earn a dissatisfactory grade. Also, students could pull up many inappropriate websites. I am referring to third graders.

post # 4

As a teacher, I would make use of the concept of a concept map and outlines for when students learn to write papers. It would be useful in showing them how writing a paper has just a few simple steps that need elaborated on. Also, the maps could be used to show students how things can be seperated into smaller and smaller groups. For example, Animals -> mammals + reptiles -> different types of mammals / reptiles under their respective catergories. Technologies that would be useful are things like Inspiration, Paint and Microsoft Word.


I would require my students to develops outlines and idea maps for writing their first papers because it is a good habit to get into. Students will be writing papers for many years to come and if they always made an outline to follow, they would be able to keep their paper on topic and be reminded to stick to what their orignal ideas (in the outline).

New skills I learned in the past week were all the Inspiration skills. The Inspiration program is extremely useful in creating concept maps because there is the option to make it one's own way or follow one of their layouts. The program could be useful for me to make examples for students to follow or for myself to follow as I am teaching.
A paragraph on new skills you acquired in the last week that you think will be especially useful to you in your educational career and why you think so.