Educational Website Evaluation

For this assignment, I evaluated www.teach-nology.com. I found it to be a useful source, that, despite its few quirks, could help any teacher to gain resources for their classroom. This assignment was helpful because I got to see many different ways to determine a website's legitimacy and effectiveness. The trick is to find a form that is manageable to you, one that you like to use, and go by those criteria to determine if the website is helpful. I think any teacher would benefit greatly by running through this little exercise before they decide to use information or materials from any website or educational software program.

Teaching With Stories

• Students have a difficult time with reading that they don't understand. "It sucks."
• The teacher uses fun stories to make ideas within science more relatable to students. 
• The "cult of seriousness". Who says that science/ learning in general, can't be written in fun language?
• the need for professional exactness within science texts has made the language of these texts completely incomprehensible for students. 
• Emotional connection is much more important than exact, precise details. Leave out some details. 
• Sometimes you have to lie in order to tell the truth.

There are countless ways to implement story telling in the social studies. Movies, tv shows, songs, music videos, etc. already exist to tell stories and reenact historical events and governmental structures. Movies and shows such as Lincoln, the West Wing, Gladiator and the Patriot come to mind off the top of my head  Stories can also be told using games and reenactments during class. Projects, such as creating an american colony or having students write a song, can also be used to help students get a more real idea of the themes in social studies. 

Technology Previewing Questions

1. As a teacher, I could help students to become independent technology users by giving them the tools that they need during classroom instruction time. I could expand on this by giving them homework that further helps to develop these technology skills. Another crucial thing that I can do is to simply make myself available to students who have questions regarding the technology skills that we learn.

2.

•  The NETS standards for teachers are the National Educational Technology Standards. Teachers should be familiar with them so that they can effectively use technology in their classrooms.
• I am most familiar with Standards 1, 2, and 4. 
• I am familiar with promoting student creativity, and designing digital age learning experiences with the technologies that I am familiar with, and with modeling digital citizenship and responsibility. Standard 3 is a week area for me, as I do not keep up very well with new technology as it comes out, such as mobile devices.
• One of the best ways to help students to gain confidence in using technology equipment and application software is to simply utilize the NETS standards for teachers when adminstering lessons that involve technology. These standards are in place so that the students are able to get the most out of these lessons.

Post-Viewing Questions

1. Another instance in a middle school science classroom that could make use of spreadsheets is during a lesson on simple machines. Students can collect data on the amount of time that a machine takes to complete  a certain task, and from there decide which machine is effective for which task.

2.  When the student in the video gets off task, the teacher asks him what he is doing, and reminds him that that is not the best use of their class time, and politely asks him to remove the picture. I would address this issue by politely reminding the student that we are in class at the moment, and that he needs to give everyone in the room the respect they deserve, including himself, by staying on task, not being a distraction, and contributing to the group effort.

3. Technology in the video optimizes learning because the use of a spreadsheet helps students to record, organize, and analyze their data. Technology can help any science class in general by making experiments easier to conduct, data easier to record, and reports easier to write using a word processor. Science is one are of study that can be particularly benefited by the use of technology.

Word Processing Observation

Pre-viewing

1. Some ideas that could be used to help teach students how to use word processors in a social studies content area class could be to get the students into an experiential mindset by having them write a letter to a historical figure, congressman, or to write a journal entry as if they witnessed an historic event.

2. When I was a student, the technology tools that were utilized the most were word processors and power points. I often had to write papers, or do presentations.  These tools contributed to student learning because I could take the skills that I learned from these tools into college and real life situations.

Post-viewing

1. The teacher in the demonstration shows all the students how to use the camera, and even makes a presentation of the steps herself in order to model the process for her students. She also explained word processing.

2. The teacher demonstrates competency by explaining what she knows to the students. Her detailed instructions shows that she is competent in this area.