525 Week 4

The last week of class had a real benefit in several ways. First and foremost, I got a better idea of the concepts of Webquests. It makes sense to utilize the resources on the web in a functional and proscribed way that brings the most benefit to a student's learning. Another thing "clicked" for me this week. That was the importance of evaluations for evaluating webquests. Looks can be deceiving. Good evaluation tools are important.

I liked the quizlab.com a great deal. It was very versatile in the options that were available. I'm also very excited about the potential for creating social networking sites for students in an educational setting. I'm looking forward to hearing updates on the proposed chemistry site at Whitnal High School.

CEDU 525 week 3

I'm very encouraged by the reaction to the issue of cyber-bullying and internet safety in general. The safety sites out there like iSafe and wired safety are truly cutting edge. With the exponential growth of the social networking components of the internet, educators seem to be one step behind in general. However these sites, with things like 24 hour cyber-bully support and resources for teachers and parents, are very important.

The site that interested me the most this week was voice stream. This is a neat site. Any activity that encourages multi sensory approaches is going to be a motivator to students. In addition, when children can "see it, hear it, say it" that's when research suggests that they learn best. Great tool with real potential for the classroom.

CEDU 525 Week 2

The class session for the week of December before Christmas was an interesting one. The work that we did on quizzes that we did were an interesting snapshot on some of the information that's out there. Tickle was perhaps the most interesting. Having looked through all of the personal quiz sites, I'm not fully sure of all of the sites relevance to teaching. Most of them seemed more for fun and not always academic in nature. The teacher created quiz sites became some of my favorites. Great application for quizlet, quizlab and Class Marker specifically. Lots of potential for any lesson.

The individual assignment from week #2 was a good one. While the web assignment was very time consuming it was well worth it. Simply put, you benefit from the time you put into something like that. I will use these ten web sites in my current social studies unit on the Midwest. I'm looking forward to sharing the results.