525 WK 6 final blog

The strategies that I will incorporate most in my classroom are advanced organizers and objectives. I use objectives right now, but I do not always share them with the students. Objectives are often something that I graze over in the beginning of a lesson and never clearly refer to them. If I began to share the objectives of the lesson and unit I can communicate a more clear purpose to my students.

Advanced organizers are also something that could be more useful than I origionally anticipated. The more structure and organization I can add to my lessons, the more learning will take place. If I start the lesson with a good question or someting else to prime the pump, I will have students that are more involved and hopefully more interested students. These stratagies alone will improve my lessons and incorporating more technology a long with them will help too.

525 WK 5

This week has been crazy for me, I had two weddings of two good friends standing up and everything took a lot of time for me. I have had a chance for reflection on some of the things we discovered this week. The most interesting thing for me was "homework and practice". I know that "practice makes perfect" and that is one of the guiding principles in my teaching. However, I do not like to beat a dead hoarse either. When introducing a new topic in class, I try to relay the information in many different ways. I often use multiple classroom and lab activities to practice the topic or information. This being said, I hate homework and try to avoid it at all costs. No teenager in their right mind will put in as much effort outside of class as they do in class, so I try to get the most out of class time. There are a number of ways to look at this technique, I guess this is how I look at it.

525 WK 4

This class is really flying by. We started in my favorite month (June) and are now almost through July. I really enjoyed the techniques we discussed this week and it made me feel good because a lot of it was stuff that I already do. I can think of a ton of lessons that are project based that I would love to share across the curriculum in my school. I also enjoyed the group discussion about reinforcement with our group. That is one thing I really try to focus on in my classroom, being positive even when the feedback may be negative. If I can maintain a positive learning environment in the classroom, students learn better and I teach better. It also means that we all can have a bit more enjoyable time!

525 Wk 3

Wow! Week three already! Not good that means summer is half over. I had never used or heard of bubble.us before this week. I was really impressed with its ease of use. I was able to just click and type to make a brainstorming web. This tool would be very useful for brainstorming ideas in the classroom as I cannot draw or write very well. This also would be easier than adding a web to a power point presentation. Education oasis also provided a ton of useful templates for educators. I could have used any of them in the classroom and it would be much easier and faster than creating my own and re-inventing the wheel. Exploratree also had a ton of thinking maps and organizers that could be used in the classroom. These maps could be shared with students so that they could choose the organizer that works best for them. With Exploratree students could organize thoughts and ideas with graphics that they choose versus just using a thinking map that I provide. The students would have more ownership in the learning process. I think all of these learning tools explored this week can be very useful to the learning process, some of these tools I can put to use right away in the classroom and others will have to be put away for another day!

525 Wk 2 Rubric V quizstar

If you google rubric makers, you can find some tools to make rubrics online. In the past I have used one or two different rubric makers and they are a life saver. When I was in college I made my rubrics on word and wasted all kinds of time formatting and spacing. Tools like rubristar make life a lot easier. With drop down menus and prompts you are able to create whatever type of rubric you need. Even for a rare discipline like mine, I am able to adapt many of the templates to meet my needs. With quizstar, you can create online quizes which provide automatic feedback. No more paper quizes that take so much time to create, copy, correct, and handback. With quizstar you can create online quizes for students and provide immediate feedback. This is a tool that I could use in my classroom. I currently operate with old paper quizes, but this could be a useful tool in the future. With the graphics and design possibilities, students may even be more successful. The only drawback to this tool currently is that I don't teach in a computer lab and not all of my students have internet access. If I used this tool, students would have to complete these assessments on their own time. While quizstar does'nt fit perfectly into my current classes, it may be useful in the future and I will surely give it a try.