Final Thoughts

This has been an informative course that has exposed me to many resources that I never knew existed. There are many things that I will definitely incorporate into my classroom. The ones that I don't find useful, i can see where other people would find them a great resource. My main problem with the class was that I spent most of the summer in a secluded lake house with spotty internet at best. I would love to have this information in some sort of notebook so that I can quickly access how to do some of these things later. With my brain, it is use it or lose it. I know that an online binder has been mentioned in the past to handle a teacher's resource book at Heath, it might be a good idea to add some of this to that. I also think that one needs a moderate amount of websavy to be able to do this. I can see how someone with limited knowledge might find it frustrating. I'm not completely prepared for Web 2.0, but I am certainly a great deal closer!

Thing #23

Well, it certainly seems that I have not been giving credit when credit is due! This is definitely something that I will change in the future! I found creative commons credits literally all over this program. I also found them several places on the internet including quite a few news websites that I visit often. I found on cnn a notation where the author had used a piece from the AP and credited it using a creative commons credit.

Thing #22

Hmmm....It took me a long time to do myspace and even longer to hop into facebook. Sometimes I feel like I have far too many social networking things going on already. I find nings interesting, but I don't see the application for my classroom. We already have wikis and about a million other ways to communicate with our students. These kids are thoroughly entrenched in facebook and myspace and I do not see them reaching out for another kind of social networking site. I don't think that I would use this in my room.

With Nings now "costing" I wonder if it will hurt the proliferation of if...

Thing #21

I like Podcasts, although I find the use in a math classroom may be rather limited. I would be much more likely to use youtube or teachertube to find something new and interesting to put into a class than a podcast. I have used podcasts in the past in my advisory classroom.

I had never gone to the Educational Podcast Network and was pleasantly surprised that there were quite a few that had to deal with mathematical topics. I was especially interested in the section on statistics. Statistics is such an ambiguous concept to many people and there were quite a few on there that helped solidify some ideas. I am going to go through my first few weeks of lessons for statistics and see if there are any that I can use!

Thing #20

I love looking for little videos for my students to watch that connects what they are learning to what is actually happening. One of my biggest pet peeves is the 70% is good enough attitude that my students have. I found this one a few years ago and have used it during advisory a few times. It gets them talking and debating. It is interesting to hear what they have to say about it!



Seriously, check it out!

I also have used this one in the past. It was made by a student to describe exactly HOW to classify conics. I show this to them right before they do the conics project!



Of course, it goes without saying that we should be careful what we show!

Thing #19

This is a really neat site. I love to read and spend a great deal of time reading. I hate going to the bookstore and wandering around looking for a book. Sites like this allow me to get suggestions based on the books that I like. It kind of reminds me of the Netflix website and how it recommends movies to me based on what I like. This would be a great place to find like-minded individuals. I do not have a classroom library. Although I can definitely see how a teacher that had one would find this useful. I question how small libraries can use it to keep track of books. I thought that libraries were not allowed to keep a record of the books that a person checked out. I would be curious to see how they use this is they are not keeping a record...

Thing #18

I can't seem to get the Sandbox thing working...Oh well.

I set up my wiki through the district and it has pretty much sat like that all year. It seems that last school year we kept getting new and even more innovative ways to "make" our kids learn. At this point, my students find the use of Wikis and other such sites neat, but ultimately a waste of time. I tried to get mine to access my wiki outside of school and the result was not positive. The fact that just about anyone can "change" it, allowed random stuff to be posted. I had all of these hopes to use it well, but like many other teachers I gave up and went back to more traditional methods of communicating with my students. Students seem to still appreciate a direct teaching approach. I will not be attempting to incorporate it next year.