Lesley Web 2.0

WebQuest

Yesterday was total overload and frustration with our WebQuest. Today it is much better, and our WebQuest looks much better than I thought it would. I think if we created another one it would be much easier.

List all the geometric shapes that you see. Choose one, draw it, define it and list all of its properties. Find another picture of a building that has your shape.

Required Reading #3

Blogging and RSS — The "What's It?" and "How To" of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators- After reading this article, I know blogging and using RSS is going to be more and more prevalent in schools. As teachers, we must be willing to learn and change so that we can try to keep up with the latest technology and also incorporate it into our classrooms. I have not figured out how I will use the blog in my classroom, but I am hoping to attempt one this year. Since we created our blog in the last class meeting this is a good start. As the article says, start small and experiment. I think that is what we all need to be doing.

Required Reading #2

The Learning Power of WebQuests – This article was quite helpful in understanding a true definition of a WebQuest. They are much more involved than I originally thought and will require quite a bit of thought and research to create one. I thought the two question litmus test that was given is quite helpful. First, can the answer be copied and pasted and second do students have to make something new out of what was learned? I find this really difficult for a math WebQuest. The first question is not that difficult but the second one is more complicated. The example of students planning a trip I thought would be a good WebQuest is on the list of what a WebQuest is not. So now I am rethinking our project.

Required Reading #1

YouTube Comes to the Classroom – I agree YouTube can be a great way to motivate students. Most of them go to YouTube daily so we need to take advantage of some of this time to enhance learning. In math classrooms, I can see students creating a rap, song, poem, etc. on many different topics that would help them remember how to work certain problems such as Pythagorean Theorem, properties of parallelograms, completing the square and many others. I agree that students do want a voice and also want to be heard. I can see my students getting real excited if they posted a math video and could see that others have watched it. I know many teachers that will stick their heads in the sand like the article says but if they can see some of us having success with it they might change their minds. My system does allow access to YouTube, but I think if I was going to put a link to a video on my website I would download it so they don’t have direct access from my website to YouTube.

Web 2.0

Luara Hall and I will be presenting http://www.evernote.com and http://www.typewith.me. We will have everyone log in to type with me and list geometric terms. As presenters we will edit the list. We will have everyone create an evernote account on the web. They will search the web and find photographs that represent the geometric terms and save to evernote as a note. They will email it to Laura and we will show how to copy to a group notebook and then share so everyone can see each others document.