Thursday, October 3, 2013

Module 3 Reflection



URLS
     URLS are special addresses that tell the web exactly where to take you.  The URL can tell us many things about the website we are trying to view: the protocol, the domain name, the folder it is in, and even the specific file.  

Search engines
     Learning how to use search engines can help students be able to find great resources more easily.  When they know how to search for specific things, the quality of the hits will be better.  This link is to a kid-friendly tutorial about using search engines: it teaches the basics!

Internet tool
     One internet tool that I was recently introduced to was Spotify.  It is an online social music website which can be found at www.spotify.com.  A teacher could create a playlist for their classroom to use whenever they have internet access.  Just like they talked about in our Globe training, you could use educational songs to teach concepts.  One artist to search on Spotify is Having Fun Teaching who produces a lot of catchy educational songs.

Web-based lesson
     Recently all of us became Globe certified, which is exactly why I chose www.globe.gov to be my example.    Basically this website has a lot of stellar resources for teacher and activities for students.  Plus, it’s free!

Favorite websites
     Obviously, one of my favorite teacher websites is www.pinterest.com.  Pinterest is a social pinboard-style bookmarking site.  This website fulfills Roblyer and Doering’s (2013) definition of a social networking site which, “focus[es] on building communities of individually designed web pages” (p. 225).  The authors also talk about having “connected friends or supporters” (p.225) who are actually called followers on Pinterest.  Lastly, the authors say that in social networking sites, one can “share media and interests in an online, easy-to-use website environment” (p. 225) which is one attribute of Pinterest.  In conclusion, Pinterest if the perfect social networking tool to use as an educator!

     My next favorite website that I will use as a teacher (if it isn’t blocked by the school system) is www.youtube.com.  Youtube has various videos that would be beneficial as an educator.  There are things from educational songs to documentaries that are free to watch online.  As an educator, I could even “upload video and photo files for online sharing” (Roblyer and Doering, 2013, p. 225) with my students and parents.  I could also tag my videos for “increased searchability” (Roblyer and Doering, 2013, p. 225).  Lastly, I could use the “easy-to-use tools” (Roblyer and Doering, 2013, p. 225) that Youtube offers to make and edit videos for my students.  This would be the perfect website to use for any flipped lessons.

2 comments:

  1. I love Pinterest! Like Roblyer and Doering said, social networks allow students to share photos and reflect on them for themselves. (pg 225) I know I love using Pinterst to come up with ideas and keep up with other techniques especially for management and organization techniques.

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  2. Rachel,

    I also love Pinterest! It is a great resource for teachers! Doering and Roblyer (2013) state, "In this type of learning (web-based lessons), teachers use online materials to help themselves and/or their students on a topic or skill (p. 207)." There are a lot of great ideas and resources on Pinterest to help reinforce the material that students are learning.



    Jennifer

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