This week we learned all about
BRAINS! Think Pinky from the Animaniacs.
I really enjoyed surfing around the
dana.org website. As a parent, I know that there is a correlation between
music and art and brain development, and I was amazed to see so many articles
on the subject. From self-experience I know that listening to soft
classical music relaxes me and does help me concentrate on more tedious work.
I would highly recommend any educator spend some time on the dana.org
website to learn methods and tips on how to soothe any class and improve their
motivation and concentration.
As an inspiring Science teacher, I
would like to take a tip from the essay "Arts and Cognition: Findings
Hint at Relationships" (http://www.dana.org/news/publications/detail.aspx?id=10768).
When I want students to learn about scientists who have made big
differences in science, I would have the students role-play and get more into
the theater arts while learning about science. I would also take a hint
from the article "Promoting Brain-Science Literacy in the K-12
Classroom" (http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=28896)
and have students create brain hats with labeled brain parts and visible
connections to other parts. I think that it is important for children to
know how their body works. Many children know that their hearts pump blood
and their lungs help them breathe, and they need to know more than that their
brain just helps them to think.
Software
and File Management
We also learned about software and file management. I am very comfortable on computers, so it
comes naturally to me to use folders and removable storage devices to store and
organize information. I didn’t even
think about it, but we need to teach that to students. When they have a clearly organized system,
they will be able to save, file and retrieve whatever they will need.
I was interested to read about the different kinds of
educational software. I have used many
of these, but did not know that there was a term for each one. The following seven types have been
identified: drill-and-practice, problem solving, creative, tutorials, simulations,
image editing and draw/paint. When I
have my own classroom, I will try to use all of these types of educational
software regularly to diversify my teaching methods and help students stay
engaged and motivated.
I know that I will use Microsoft PowerPoint regularly. I will use it to make presentations and
quizzes for my students. I will also
assign my students to use it to create science reports and summarize
units. I think that it may be a
challenge at first to teach PowerPoint to the students who are not used to it
and to allow them plenty of time to create their presentations. I want to help my students create good
presentations with PowerPoint, not
just use PowerPoint to create a
presentation.
Technology
Explorations
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1.
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Describe what you learned from exploring this resource. Be
thorough in your response.
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I learned that delicious.com is a site to store and organize
bookmarks for webpages that you would like to retrieve later. By creating a free account, you can use a
computer, smartphone or tablet to search the internet and save any bookmark
you find interesting.
Diigo.com on the other hand is an online program that allows
you to store and organize bookmarks, screenshots, images, articles, documents
and even notes for yourself. You can
access these stored resources from your computer, smartphone or table and is
most useful for someone who uses different computers regularly.
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2.
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How could you use this resource in a school setting? It does not matter if it is in your field
or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in
educational settings.
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As an inspiring science teacher, I could use delicious.com and/or
diigo.com with students during research reports. I could assign them to use delicious.com
and/or diigo.com to find and store reference materials to use when writing a
report or creating a powerpoint presentation.
It would be like a digital Reference section at the end of a report or
presentation.
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3.
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Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike;
Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.
Why or Why not?
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I would not recommend delicious.com to other educators. Although it is free and easy to use, I do
not see much point in it. I can easily
store and organize bookmarks using any of my current internet browsers. I feel that delicious.com is redundant and
just makes you take an additional step to retrieve information that you can
store elsewhere.
I would recommend diigo.com to other educators. It is particularly useful in a school
setting for students who use different computers. They would not have to store all of their
information on a shared drive and only access it from school. Students would have the ability to store,
share and retrieve information from diigo.com from any computer, smartphone
or tablet and share it on social networking sites.
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http://www.historypin.com/
(starting up slowly)
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1.
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Describe what you learned from exploring this resource. Be
thorough in your response.
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I learned that historypin.com is a website for people to
post, share and collaborate on history projects. You can post old photos (scanned) of your
own and fit them into any of a number of present projects, or you can create
your own projects with your images and videos. For example, you can post a picture of your
family’s trip to Munich in the Europeana project file. You can also add to a view historic photos
and overlay onto current street maps.
I found it very interesting to look at photos of cars from the 1920’s
transposed onto modern street maps.
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2.
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How could you use this resource in a school setting? It does not matter if it is in your field
or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in
educational settings.
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Historypin.com is designed to be used as a history resource,
so it would be most easy to use in a history class. As an inspiring science teacher, I think it
would be interesting to have students use historypin.com to research what was
happening at certain times in history while scientific discoveries were
occurring. For example, what images
can they find to explain what was happening in the world when Madam Curie was
learning about radioactivity?
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3.
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Would you recommend this resource to other educators?
Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth. Why
or Why not?
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Historypin.com is free to use with a gmail account and does
seem easy to use. I think that I would
mildly recommend the use of historypin.com to other educators. I think that it would be most useful to a
history teacher, particularly to find images of time periods to show students
to capture their attention during units.
For me, this would not be a daily use website.
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1.
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Describe what you learned from exploring this resource. Be
thorough in your response.
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I learned about two different talking calculators. The calculator found at http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games/calculator/
is considered a game and runs from an internet site. It is a basic calculator, brightly colored
and the speaking voice is pleasant and clear.
The
calculator found at http://www.softpedia.com/get/Science-CAD/Big-Simple-Talking-Calculator.shtml is downloadable so can be used on
the computer even when the internet connection is down. This is a full screen calculator (and only
viewable full screen), clear button functions and a clearly understood
voice. The voice is set to English by
default, and can be set to a variety of other languages.
Both calculators ‘talk’ to you when you push the buttons. So, you can hear your math problem spoke to
you as you calculate what you want.
They are also both free.
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2.
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How could you use this resource in a school setting? It does not matter if it is in your field
or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in
educational settings.
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Calculators can easily and frequently be used in math and
science classes. As an inspiring
science teacher, I could have students use either of these calculators to
make calculations pertaining to science experiments. Measuring flow rate of a river, growth
population of a species, or the volume inside of an object for example.
Since these calculators talk, they would also be beneficial
for students who need number reinforcement, or even a way to learn numbers in
a foreign language.
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3.
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Would you recommend this resource to other educators?
Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth. Why
or Why not?
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If I were to choose between the two talking calculators, I
would pick the one from softpedia.com.
The only reason to pick this one over the other is that it is
downloadable freeware so does not require an internet browser to be open.
In general, I would recommend using a talking calculator to
lower elementary teachers who need to reinforce numbers or math terms or to
learn numbers and math in a foreign language.
By the time students are in middle and high school, simple calculators
do not need to talk and if they are needed (and approved for use by the
teacher), students can use the calculator tool that already comes installed
on computers.
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1.
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Describe what you learned from exploring this resource. Be
thorough in your response.
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I learned that 2write4math.pbworks.com explains how to use
writing in a cross-curricular fashion with math. By incorporating writing skills into all
subject matter, not only does it help strengthen the writing and
comprehension skills but allows students to learn the other subject (math in
this case) from an alternate perspective.
Having the students write about math is a way to assess their
comprehension and allows them to restate math problems in their own words.
This site was developed for a course from the University of
the Cumberlands to teach teachers how to use writing in math.
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2.
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How could you use this resource in a school setting? It does not matter if it is in your field
or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in
educational settings.
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As an inspiring science teacher, I would not use this
resource to write for math, but I would use it to help student write for
science. The standard science writing
is to write reports on experiment findings or write short blurbs to put up on
posters and presentations. I would
like to use some of the ideas found here to have the students write science
based poems and journals. I could even
work with a writing or English teacher to create more indepth projects that
would cross into both classrooms.
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3.
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Would you recommend this resource to other educators? Like/Dislike;
Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth.
Why or Why not?
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I would recommend this page to other educators. It is free and easy to use and contains a
lot of good information and ideas that can be transposed into any
classroom. This is a good reference to
look at every so often to get a new idea of a way to freshen up non-english
classes with writing.
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1.
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Describe what you learned from exploring this resource. Be
thorough in your response.
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I learned that piclits.com is a fun website that allows you
to be creative with words and photos.
Piclits.com has many photos to choose from in which you can then
transpose words on top of the picture.
For example, you can choose a picture of a frog, and then choose words
that remind you of the picture to place on top of the photo. When you are finished, you have a photo
with words that can make a stunning visual.
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2.
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How could you use this resource in a school setting? It does not matter if it is in your field
or level, you need to understand how the resource might be used in
educational settings.
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As an inspiring science teacher, I do not see this resource
being used much in my high school classes.
I could see this resource be more used in upper elementary and middle
school English or art classes. This
would be a fun software to use when creating poems or short pieces meant to
capture thoughts and emotions. It
could even be used with a school counselor or emotionally disabled students
trying to communicate their feelings.
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3.
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Would you recommend this resource to other educators?
Like/Dislike; Ease of use, fee or not, and so forth. Why
or Why not?
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I would recommend this use of piclits.com to English and art
teachers for limited use. Although
fun, free and easy to use and share, I do not imagine that this software
would get much use in a classroom. I
could imagine it being used once in a while for a specific project, but not
regularly. I think that there are just
too many other photo-with-text software programs available, that this one
just does not stand out to me.
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