Software

I think it was very beneficial that we learned all of the software skills. The skills we learned are something that we will all use in teaching, whether it is in elementary or secondary school. Word and Publisher were probably the most helpful for me because I feel like when I become a teacher these are the ones I will use the most. I will be writing letters, newsletters, flyers, etc. to my students and their parents probably on a weekly basis. I didn't realize in Word how it was so much easier to make tables in order to make things line up equally. I also really liked learning how to make concept maps. The program that we learned to use is so much easier then just making it on Word. Making concept maps will help me plan my lessons and units for the class. It is such a good organizational tool. You can make anything from a teaching tool to an assessment for your students with these skills learned. Using a concept map would be a good example of an assessment to use for your students. Overall all the software skills learned will help out in the future when we all become teachers.

Web Resources

My favorite web resources we went over in class are United Streaming and Rubistar. United Streaming is a really interesting resource, I used to love when my teachers played videos for me in class. I think Rubistar is great since you can both look for different rubrics and create your own. I think I would personally use United Streaming more then Rubistar. Rubistar is a great resource for rubrics, but I feel like I could do that on my own if need be. United Streaming has so many great videos of so many different topics. Especially since some of the videos are cartoons, which children would love. I would use videos in every subject if i could. Visual learners could really benefit from seeing videos in the classroom. Social Studies I think is the best subject area where videos are the most beneficial. It is hard for students to understand the past sometimes, and seeing the past through videos will help students imagine it. Science would also be a great subject to use videos in. Seeing experiments be created on a computer or TV will really excite students to want to do it on their own. United Streaming is such a good tool and I will definitely use it when I become a teacher in an elementary classroom.

Inspiration

Inspiration is definitely something I would invest for my classroom. Inspiration can be used for instructional purposes, assessments, and productivity tools. Some of the ideas that students could use Inspiration for are: plot summaries, diagrams ( example: the government ), help define new vocabulary, note-taker organizer, learning about a new concept, cause and effect activities, make a food chain, making different cycles (example: water cycle or how to recycle), making a job chart for the classroom, and if you are teaching a new language you can make a chart with the English word on the one side and the other language on the other side. Teachers can use concept maps as a tool for assessing students on a topic they were just taught. For example, the topic could be Animal Adaptations and students could fill out the concept map of everything they know about that topic. Teachers could also instruct students by creating a cycle map with the students. For example, the teacher could walk through the water cycle with his/her students to help them learn along the way. Overall I think Inspiration is a great software product and it is so simple to use that younger students would not have a problem working it.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking would play a great role in a classroom. It could benefit my students and I in many ways. Students could each have their own bookmarking site and save certain websites for school projects or experiments. For instance, if my students were doing a research project on the first 13 colonies in the United States, they could bookmark all different websites they found and tag certain topics to make them simple to find. This would make finding the information easier for my students. As a teacher I could use bookmarking to save all different lesson plan websites and tag different lessons for certain subjects.

As a student now, social bookmarking can help me in almost every class. I can save all of the websites I use for all my classes into one place. It would be much easier to find certain information I need. For example, I wouldn't need to search through Google or Yahoo for an hour just to look for that one website I found some other day.

GoogleApps

I think GoogleApps is a great tool. I have never even see it before this class. The advantages of this application is that you don't have to save all the time, you can share information with other people and they can leave comments on your work, and it is easier to grade papers using GoogleDocs if you are a teacher. The best part of GoogleApps is the fact that you can share your work with other people. It would be a great tool to use for group projects. The disadvantages are that there are not as many options in the different applications. For example, in the presentations application there are not as many background choices compared to PowerPoint. If there are more disadvantages to this application I have not come across them yet.

How to incorporate Blogs into a classroom...

Teachers can use blogs in many different ways for all subjects. Students could write predictions/summaries they have for a story read in class.  For a science class students could write their observations about an experiment. Also students could use blogs in math, they could write about how they feel to solve a certain problem. Blogs could be used for a self-assessment for all subjects. A problem with blogs is that not all children have access to a computer or the internet at home. Even if blogs are only being used in school it could be a problem. For instance, if the school itself does not have a large amount of computers a child could be left out of blogging at the same time as everyone else. Overall I think blogs are a very useful tool in the classroom.