Twitter

I enjoyed the informative presentation on twitter, but I doubt I will use twitter in my classroom. I am not a big fan of it. Just they whole concept behind twitter is kind of stupid to me. Why would I want to announce my every move on the internet. Some people might think that's a great idea, but I like my privacy and I am pretty secretive. Plus I'm not very popular obviously; since I joined a week ago, I have two followers. How lame! Depending on the make-up of my class, I may end up using twitter for reminding or announcing things to my students. But there will probably be many more social networking sites by then, and Twitter will be as outdated then as MySpace is now.

Wordle

Wordle is a pretty neat tool. I used it to see what words I use most in my blogs. I think it is a great way for people to create collages of what their interests are with words, sort of like an option for an "all about me" exercise. I created a wordle filled with words that described who I am, what I am, what I like, and what I look like. This was fun.
However, it should be easier for the user to save the images they create with wordle to their computer. You can't just copy and paste them, so I don't really know how they expect people to use them other than by taking screen shots. I also don't like the way the gallery is setup. There are millions of wordles created like every week, and since they are listed in chronological order it is extremely annoying when you are looking for a particular wordle. I hope the creators of wordle.net will make a few adjustments so this tool would be more user-friendly.

WebQuests

I don't remember doing anything like this when I was in school, but it seems pretty neat. Is the main purpose to get students more engaged in the material or to get students to explore technology? I could definitely use WebQuests to relate math to realistic situations. This is a great way to engage students that don't really like math. However, I can see how time consuming developing and utilizing WebQuests may be. And it takes a lot of creativity to develop a WebQuest that is fun, interactive, and follows the standards of the curriculum. This teaching tool could be used as an end of unit project that ties together the main ideas. I saw a lot of WebQuest that didn't seem very effective, so I am not sure if it is worth all of the time and effort that some people put into them. I don't think I would like to make one from scratch.

Awesome Findings

As I was working on my presentation on prezi, I decided I would use screen shots and I uploaded them to google so I could edit them (since I have very little knowledge on how to do this using Mac). So when I clicked edit, it redirected me to picnik. I was so surprised and excited!!!! I think it is cool how I was using something new on accident. Once I started playing around with it, I found they have a lot of neat things you can do to photos. I had to try this at home!!! When I got home, I spent a good hour just checking out the various features of picnik and I used it to create a beautiful profile picture for facebook. I look forward to using this site A LOT in the future because it is just that AWESOME!!!!

Classroom 2.0

So the assignment is to blog about anything, and I'm sure nobody wants to hear about how messed up things are in my life right now, so I will discuss Classroom 2.0! I signed up for an account, because I hope to use technology to assist my high school students in learning math. I had never seen any technology, other than calculators and  projectors, used in a high school math class until I visited Farragut High School two years ago. A teacher was using a SmartBoard to teach Algebra to his students. My initial response was fear that I would not be prepared to use such technology in my classroom. I then felt excited to have such a great teaching tool available to me that teachers didn't have twenty years ago. I thought using a SmartBoard was the only thing that I could do differently than my high school teachers. However, Classroom 2.0 allows me to communicate with teachers in other areas of the country. These teachers not only share things that work for them in their classrooms, they also share online tools and resources that can be used to integrate technology into the learning experience. I would recommend Classroom 2.0 to all teachers and future teachers.

What Have I Learned About Evaluating Websites

I learned that it is not always easy to locate necessary information, such as, the last revision date of a website. It is also sometime difficult to specify who the author of a site is. Evaluating the credibility of a site is important and sometimes it takes a little fishing around to get the facts.

As I plan to teach high school math, it is very hard for me to see how I would use these skills in my classroom. It is beneficial to be able to effectively evaluate a website. However, I can not think of how this will help my students excel in solving math problems. On the other hand, I will most likely also be a "home room teacher" for at least one hour per day each week. During this time I will probably be expected to assist my students in improving their reading levels. It would be possible to integrate the usage of web resources in this sort of class, so it would be beneficial for my students to be able to evaluate websites. Writing a research papers is a requirement for most introductory English courses in colleges, so this would also help my students be better prepared for college work.

Website Evaluation Site

I found a pretty cool website evaluation site. It is from the Teacher Tap website so it automatically caught my eye as a useful resource for us future teachers. It not only gives basic website evaluation guidelines, but it provides examples of hoax websites and links to of useful website evaluation sites!
Check it out
This site also has links to other awesome teacher resources provided by the Teacher Tap website.