Evidence Posting #2

This week I chose an article on Electronic Whiteboards. Whiteboards peeked my interest after attending a workshop on interactive whiteboards. I was wondering how these are being accepted in classrooms by teachers. They offer interesting alternatives to bringing lessons to life. Special electronic markers and an eraser work as the chalk and eraser from the traditional chalkboard.
The notes taken during a lesson can be saved for later. Some boards even have "voting' devices which allow teachers to check in with the students and assess their comprehension. The teacher asks a question and the student respond by voting with a hand held device. The totals are instantly tabulated and presented to the teacher. He or She can then present the responses to the class and easily turn this into a quick math lesson.

One draw back though. This is cool technology may not be accessible to students with disabilities.

The article I found also has several links to lessons to use with the interactive boards. I am interested to know how many schools have this technology or if this is still new and uncharted territory in the US.

Speaking of Electronic Whiteboards... Retrieved on April 30, 2007
http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech/tech206.shtml

Site of the Week April 30th

My site of the week is http://bensguide.gpo.gov/
This site contains information, games and resource links that deal with our US Government. The site has activities and information broken out by grade levels and a separate section for parents and teachers. This is a great site for anyone who is teaching about the branches of government, how a bill becomes a law, historical documents, the election process and lots of other related content. Grades K-2 there is also US Geography.

This site would meet the following state goals:

STATE GOAL 14: Understand political systems, with an emphasis on the United States.
A. Understand and explain basic principles of the United States government.

STATE GOAL 17: Understand world geography and the effects of geography on society, with an emphasis on the United States.
A. Locate, describe and explain places, regions and features on the Earth.

Evidence Posting #1

My evidence posting is in reference to the website www.secondlife.com as an effective teaching tool. I was interested in this topic as a learning tool because from what I have experienced so far I am not able to see the educational value of this type of website. I have found through my research that Campus:Second Life is providing a unique environment for educators. Campus:Second life is providing a safe place for experimental learning and allowing students to try out new ideas and learn from their mistakes. This works particularly well for students studying, for example, Urban Development. The class is able to go out to an island and build up a town, village or city. They can see what works and what doesn’t before they get out into the real world. Here they can make mistakes and it won’t harm anything or anyone.

Second Life is creating a lot of buzz on the Educational field. The content is created by virtual users so it is hard to predict the educational value of this site in the long term.

I have changed my thinking about this site just because I have found the areas that are more educational. Second Life does seem to have great potential for learning opportunities for adults in these education groups on the website.


Educators Explore ‘Second Life” online Retrieved on April 22, 2007
www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/11/13/second.life.university/index.html

Second Life A virtual world resource for educators and academics Retrieved online on April 22, 2007
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

April 16, 2007 Second Life Chat

Our class chat time was held in Second Life at Dewey's house. It was a more comfortable atmosphere because the class was together and away from the outside SL distractions. We were able to move about freely and explore some of the gestures and abilities that are available to a user on this site. I am still not entirely sold on this site being educational. We have be told there are educational places but have not be given any examples to prove this to be true. I will need to explore this at another time.

Site of the week April 16th

The site I chose was

http://www.microsoft.com/education/default.mspx

This site is a resource for teachers. I focused on the lesson plans. They provide several lesson plans for different subject areas. Each lesson includes a teacher guide, student guide as well as resources and follow activites. The plans also include a section with the specific ISTE NETS standards for the plan. The plan I referred to had the following standards:Students use technology to locate, evaluate, and collect information from a variety of sources.

This is my first entry on a blog.