School Web Sites are Outdated

After completing an assignment for my Computers in Curriculum Design & Evaluation course, which required me to review an educational Web site and present my feedback to the class, I was a little uneasy, as I discovered that many school Web sites in my town are extremely outdated.

The Web site that I reviewed is actually the site for the Gifted & Talented school in my town. Though the site does present some really great information regarding the various programs the school offers, it isn't a very easy site to navigate through nor is it very aesthetically pleasing.

I offered some suggestions for improving the site, which included adding more multimedia to the site, such as real images, graphics, audio and video, to help make it more interesting for students, parents and other teachers, who may be visiting the site. I also thought it would be great if the school would require all teachers to regularly update their home page and link to a blog, which would provide an avenue for students to communicate with each other and with their teacher on lessons and other issues relevant to the class.

Though these sound like great suggestions, I'm sure I'm not the first person who brought these ideas to the surface. There's likely a problem with funding for the Web sites in this school district, which again brings up the issue of whether or not technology is an important part of education.

Facebook as a Learning Tool

After months of being pressured by my friends and relatives, who tried earnestly to convince me to join Facebook for social networking purposes, I finally gave in and joined a week ago. It took a while for me to jump on the Facebook bandwagon because I didn't know if I would find the time to come home everyday, check my profile and respond to friend requests and posts from friends. Now that I'm a member, I'm really glad I joined. I've gotten back in touch with several long lost friends and relatives, and I've really been enjoying it.

Since I'm a full-time student working toward my Master's in Teaching, I started thinking about a possible place in the classroom for Facebook. I definitely think teachers can use Facebook as a way of sparking discussions on assignments and lessons among their students. Since, I'm hoping to start my teaching career as a Middle School Language Arts teacher, I started to think about specific ways that I could utilize the program in my classroom to help with my Language Arts lessons. I thought that it would be a great way to post poetry and other literary works and have students post their interpretations and provide personal feedback on other required readings. This would allow students to start an online discussion by using a technology platform that they would enjoy using and likely already be familiar with.

I did a little research to try find out if any teachers were currently using Facebook in their classrooms in any way, and I came across an article entitled "Faculty use Facebook as Learning Tool", from The Independent Voice of Central Michigan University, which talks about professors' use of Facebook in their classrooms. One journalism professor uses the program to communicate with his students and provide feedback on assignments, and he said it's a program that students are really enjoying. He and other professors at the school view Facebook as a great tool for use in the classroom, and I'd have to agree with them. Facebook is a really great social networking tool, but it can definitely serve as much more than that in a classroom.

Starfall.com

Starfall.com is a really amazing educational resource for teachers of early childhood education, who are looking for fun and motivating methods for teaching their students how to read and write. It is suitable for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first grade and second grade, and it provides several fun and interactive programs all devoted to engaging and inspiring young children to love learning how to read and write. As most young children have such short attention spans, I definitely think it's vital to keep them excited while they are learning with fun and appealing learning tools.

I navigated through a few of the programs, and I can definitely see how children will enjoy learning to read and write with Starfall.com. As they click on images and letters, they can hear audio pronounciations of the letters and sounds. They are also taught words and letters through very fun and catchy songs, which are sure to keep many young child amused and motivated as they become eager to continue to learn how to read and write. Students are also provided instant feedback, which is very motivational for young children, as it instills a sense of confidence in their abilities. Starfall.com also provides several helpful tools for parents to use when assisting their children in learning to read and write and to reinforce what they are learning in school.

Though I don't plan on starting out my career in education by teaching young children, it is definitely an area that I would like to experience someday, and Starfall.com would be a great tool to help me inspire and instill a love for reading and writing in my young students.

Discovery Education

Discovery Education seems like an extremely helpful online resource for teachers looking for effective ways to integrate technology into their classroom curriculum, and I was really impressed to learn that such an extensive Web site is available for teachers and parents. It offers various types of digital educational tools, including subject and grade specific lessons that include videos, virtual labs and explorations, which can definitely help teachers make learning much more engaging and motivational for students of multiple learning styles.

After reviewing the site, I was really impressed with the features of Discovery Education Science, in which the programs provide a highly interactive learning environment that allows students to research and explore as real scientists. I can definitely see how these programs can be effective in engaging students while they are learning science, which can often be a difficult subject to grasp for many.

Discovery Education Assessment was another tool that can be extremely helpful to teachers in preparing their students for standardized tests, as it assesses student progress toward meeting state standards for reading/language arts, math, and science. This allows teachers to better focus their instruction in effort to improve student learning and help to increase their test scores.

I was also happy to see that Discovery Education offers several resources to assist in enhancing curriculum, as well as teachers' professional development, such as Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators, which offers a categorized list of the best sites for teaching and learning and the New Teacher Survival Central, which offers helpful tips and tools for new teachers. That's one section that I'm sure I'll be visiting often when I start my first teaching job next year.

WebQuest Presentations

I presented my WebQuest in my graduate class this past Wednesday night, along with the remaining other half of our class. I must say that everyone had either created or modified a really great WebQuest, and the presentations were all excellent.

After seeing so many different WebQuests targeted for all grade levels, I can definitely see the great benefit for students. WebQuests definitely make the lessons more fun and appealing and teach students how to use the internet for research and learning purposes. Though they may be time consuming to create, I definitely think they are worth implementing in the classroom. Depending on the content, they can likely be used year after year or modified slightly to accommodate each new class.

I was really happy to know that programs exist to help teachers create the most efficient WebQuest, and though I've never heard of a WebQuest before this class, I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to learn about how to implement them into my classroom curriculum. Here's a link to my WebQuest: http://questgarden.com/71/20/8/081011204114/
Enjoy!

QuestGarden

I recently used QuestGarden to create a WebQuest assignment for an 8th grade Language Arts class. I'll be presenting the finished product for my graduate class tomorrow night. The program was overall pretty simple to use. As I created the WebQuest using the system, it offered checkpoints and advice along the way, which were extremely helpful. I didn't register for the 2-year subscription but instead registered for the 30-day free trial. After 30 days, I will no longer be able to edit the WebQuest I created, but it will be available for one year.

Though the system is quite easy to use, I did find that it was extremely time consuming and sometimes very slow due to so many users, according to error messages I received. There was also a bug on the evaluation page, which created a huge blank space before my rubrics. I decided to insert a photo to cover the blank space, which in the end, actually looked very nice.

I would definitely use QuestGarden again to create another WebQuest, and I would recommend it to others. I would just keep in mind that it will be very time consuming, especially if your goal is to make it as efficient and aesthetically pleasing as possible for your students.

After I present my WebQuest in class tomorrow, I'll be sure to include a link to it.

MY Access!

After examining the MY Access! Web site, watching a video that demonstrated students', teachers' and administrators' use of the product, as well as reading the MY Access! Efficacy Report, it is quite clear that this web-based instructional writing tool is truly amazing. Since writing is such a vital aspect of education in all subject areas, I am definitely a supporter of implementing cross-curricular writing opportunities for students whenever possible. As research has shown, students' writing ability is immensely strengthened with repetition and immediate feedback, and the MY Access! product provides those key features. All of the MY Access! program's impressive features undoubtedly serve to motivate students to want to write and want to learn how to write successfully. Just as Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, states, "kids respond to feedback from electronic games because it is immediate, accurate and incremental, " I can see how students would want to submit a revised version of their writing as quickly as possible when they receive a low score using MY Access!. I can also see how students using this program will start to view the process of writing and learning to write fun. The instant feedback and gratification provided by MY Access! is definitely a great motivational tool for students at all levels.

As a true believer in having a dictionary and thesaurus near me at all times when working on any type of writing assignment, I was really excited to learn that MY Access! contains these important features and encourages their use, while helping students work to strengthen their spelling and vocabulary and improve their writing scores and overall writing performance. Since writing is such an important part of all school subjects and all careers, the MY Access! instructional tool is a great way to teach children at an early age to love and appreciate writing. I can't wait to use this program in my classroom when I become a Language Arts teacher.