Blog, Wikis and Websites... Oh my

Through the course of this class blogs, websites and wikis are the technology I feel the most comfortable using. Blogs are a great way to share your ideas with the rest of the world. They are extremely easy to use and allow for a lot of creative freedom. There is a feature that allows readers of your blog to comment, you can respond to these comments as well with another comment option. I use blogger for my blog which I really enjoy, I tried wordpress as well, but found Blogger more user friendly. Blogs are technology that anyone could find useful. It could be used for work, to relay information, or just for fun. I could see myself blogging beyond this class.

While I feel pretty comfortable with wikis I do not know how how much I like them. I made a wiki using wikispaces. Through one account on wikispaces you can have numerous wikis similarly you can have numerous blogs on one account of blogger and numerous websites on Weebly. A wiki is basically website pages that anyone you invite into your wiki can edit. In some cases like Wikipedia you do not even have to be invited into the group to edit the page. I could see a wiki being useful as a teacher, you can have a class wiki that you can post homework, have discussions( which I have done for many classes), get feedback from students and even work as a class on a project. Wiki can be used for business,nonprofits, and even for fun! Wikis are easy to use and like most technology the more you use them the easier they are to navigate.

Creating a website was my favorite technology of the semester! I created my website using Weebly. I must admit I was intimidated by the idea of making a website and assumed it would be extremely difficult. I played around with the website, a lot because I thought it would be such a useful skill to know how to do. I changed my website almost daily when I first starting using it until I finally found a formal I loved. I am proud of my website and feel that a website would be a extremely beneficial thing to have for a class. I will use one with my future classroom. I want to keep up with this site, I think it is a great way to display your work. This is something I could sent to future jobs, so they can see some of my work and learn a little about me.

The Bare Necessities

The bare necessities
I am the Vice President of an MSU's campus chapter for TOMS shoes. We organized a bare foot walk to raise awareness for the children around the world who go without shoes each day. We urged people to go barefoot all day not only to raise awareness. but also see how difficult a day without shoes really is. April 8, was World Wide day without shoes. Social issues are extremely important to me and something I want to instill in my students. The State News wrote an article about our walk and our chapter. I was extremely happy about this because more people could learn about this issue I am very passionate about!

Brain Pop

I think it is very important not only to use technology in the classroom, but also show the students technology they can use outside the classroom. Brainpop is a great educational website. It is broken up into Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts and Music, Health, and Technology. One of my favorite features on the site is a section where you can select the state, subject and grade level and it will tell the academic standards that the activity in the games cover and you can select them. I think this could this feature could be very beneficial for the teacher so they can tel the students which activities they want them to complete.There is a feature that allows helps parents learn what their child is doing. I think this is great way to make sure parents are involved with there children. Another great feature is BrainPopEducators Blog which features research, lesson plans, video tutorials, curriculum calender, classroom tools, professional development and standards. The site offer tips tool and resources for teachers to share with one another which I think is very important. There is also BrainpopJunior, which is geared toward younger children. One of my favorite things about the site is Brainpopesl this part of the animated educational site is geared toward students who do not speak English and to help them learn with animated movies, study tools, quizzes and fun games. Since I am majoring in TESOL, I thought this was really exciting there are not too many sites that I have found for ESL students. This site is a great tool I would want my student to use!

Teaching English Abroad

I have always been interested in the idea of teaching English abroad. One site I found Teach Abroad really interests me. You can search the country that you are interested in teaching in and they will show you the programs and jobs that they offer there. Since TESOl is my minor I think that this experience would be especially rewarding and allow me to work with my students more effectively. The opportunity sounds really appealing to me also because it allows you to be submersed in another culture. For most of the programs you are required to have a TEFL certificate or TESOL certificate. Since I love travel and teaching, I feel combining these two parts of my life would be very exciting.

All Questions Answered

While exploring Kathy Schrocks Education Blog Pics
I found a site that I think could be very beneficial for students. The site is called WolframAlpha . WolframAlpha's computation knowledge engine is pretty incredible. You can type in a math problem and it will explain it in numerous ways. it will show step by step hoe they got to the answer as well, which I think is very helpful. The answers given are broken up in many parts, the concept, components, linguistic disambiguation, real-time results, immediate additional information, links to more computations, source information link,additional formats and popup copyable content. While playing around with the site to see if it could answer a question like, where is the Berlin Wall it gave me the answers populations, map, local time, temp, humidity, wind, elevation, near by cities, nicknames and notable people connected to Berlin. I think this site would be a great search engine for students. It it much more filtered than typing that question in to google. Recently WolframAlpha launched a WolframAlpha for Educators . There are lesson plans for math, science and social studies. You can also submit lesson plans so other teachers can share ideas. There are applications that help to create visual aids for presentations, handouts and graphs. Teachers can you the site to assign homework based on info from the site, as a reference in computers labs and for research papers or projects. I think this site is great, it is something I would use in my own classroom.

Digital Story Telling in the classroom

I really enjoyed making a Digital Story. I had to use a few sites before I found one that worked for me. I tried Joggle first, but I had some trouble with it. I ended up using PhotoPeach, which I really liked. There is a photo limit for free use, But you can pay to get unlimited use. While you can not upload your own music from an mpg for free, you can use a YouTube video with music. I was able to find the music that I wanted to go along with my pictures. I think that the digital story telling is a great tool for children to use. It allows them to be creative make learning fun. This is something that I would like to use in my classroom.

Digital Story Telling

New Orelans, Katrina Releif on PhotoPeach