Internet Safety

The internet is great! I do not think you could find somebody to say that it it not a great tool for educational purposes. There are so many beneficial advantages to using the internet. It makes it wonderful for the students to learn using new and exciting technologies to learn. Unfortunately, there is an ugly side to the internet. There are sites out here that are nothing but negative, and there are means to post rumors and inaccuracies about people. This can be very hurtful to students who are trying to find their way through their adolescence. There have been suicides and other awful incidents that have occur ed due to this cyber bullying. It is important to make our students aware of the power of the internet. This is why teachers have to devote a class or two to internet rules and regulations. Involving the students helps include them into the process and they will more than likely follow the rules. Technology is a wonderful thing, but we do always have to be aware of what our students are up to.

The 24/7 Classroom

This week we designed a website that would be accessible to students and parents. This is a wonderful tool to use in our educational world today. It allows us teachers to post assignments and resources, so students can not claim they forgot what to do or lost their assignment. Looking at the sites my classmates created, I feel a little inadequate. I do have some of the basics but I enjoyed what some did with the different widgets and graphics. It was a fun assignment, as well as a worth while one. It is important to give students access to curriculum and requirements and this allows for that kind of access. If you would like to see my site, here is the link: http://emsboss.wetpaint.com/?t=anon I got some great ideas from the others in class and I will add to this as I go forward.

Using Web 2.0 in Our Lessons

With all of the new technology in the world today, we educators would be foolish not to take advantage. There are soooo many great sites that teachers can use to create effective lessons and allow students to express themselves creativity. There are so many tools, I could not begin to list them, but I checked out mypodcast.com and this very site blogger.com These can be used to present information and gauge information! I would think that for every unit you teach, you should try to incorporate at least one of the thousands of web 2.0 tools into the lesson planning
I decided to use www.blogger.com to have students create a blog. The blog will deal with westward expansion in the 19th century. The students will put themselves in the shoes of those pioneers and post what experiences they would expect to encounter during a long trip west. They will use what they read and learn in class to draw from. Here is the Backboard link to my lesson: http://www.getbackboard.com/view/S6DKrABNx9

Presentations Other Than PowerPoint

This week we looked at the other kind of presentation applications on the web. Everybody and their mother has used PowerPoint and knows all about that program. Don't get me wrong, PowerPoint is great! I have used it and have done some nice presentations. I got a chance to use Open Office presentation to create a presentation and it is really good. It has many of the same features as PowerPoint and it is free! (Yeah!) I looked at Animoto which is also a great site, but it limits your creativity and it cost money to make an extensive presentation. The presentation I did for class was done in Photo Story. It is a great program that allows you to load pics and music into your presentation. You can also provide your own narration to the video. Here is my link to my Name That President presentation, Enjoy it!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3191934570972052849