This week I chose to investiage a tool called Engrade, which is an online gradebook and organization tool that has a myriad of uses that could be very useful particularly for educators. Engarde is currently the number one online gradebook and has more than 2.4 million members, including 270,000 registered teachers. The site is extremely user friendly, has an excellent and very informative tutorial that walks you through how to navigate and use the site, and is also 100% free to registered users. I signed up for a teacher account and was able to peruse the tool and create my own "mock" classroom, in order to see how the tool worked exactly. I created a U.S. history course classroom, added some students, created an attendance book, a custom grading policy, and even my own online quiz.
With this tool, teachers are able to record grades and attendance, schedule and post assignments, build classroom materials such as lessons, quizzes, and flash cards, create, share, and assign wikis or lessons, and even print out grade reports for students. Another great aspect of this tool is that it allows you post classroom information online and to communicate with students and parents directly. This could alleviate the problem of students missing assignments and other work due to illness or other reasons. With assignments, homework, and even quizzes being posted online, the students are able to access these things right from their home computers. With all of these tools available on one site, teachers could be much more organized and efficient, and could then spend more time developing interesting lessons and expanding their students' educational horizons.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
100 apps for tech savy teachers (Footnote App)
Our group chose to look at a website provided by Rasmussen college, it is a listing along with brief descriptions of 100 applications that tech savvy teachers could use in the classroom. Included among the listing are quite a few tools that we have looked at in our class already, as well as many quite useful tools that we have not yet explored. There are tools with which you can create and generate online tests and quizzes, administrative tools that could be used for filing daily information such as attendance, grades, assignment tracking, etc., a myriad of research tools, online curriculum pages, lesson planning pages, virtual debating forums, and many many more. We each chose to focus our attention on one particular tool, I chose an online historical document tool called footnote.
Footnote.com is a research tool that contains more than 70 million original historical documents and photos. Being an avid lover and student of history, I certainly know just how important it is to have reliable sources from which to pull research data. With footnote.com, many of the historical documents are from such renowned institutions as the National Archives, and the Library of Congress. Information on the site in bundled by sections or by historical eras, such as the Civil War period, The Holocaust Collection, World War II, Vietnam, Native American Collection, Black History, A Newspapers Archive, and an Interactive Census Project. The Interactive Census Project is particularly interesting in that it allows you to find and search information pertaining to census data all the way back to the year 1860. This particular tool could be used in math classes, geography classes, government/political courses, and particularly history courses.
Perusing through the site, I myself was able to search military and pension records from the time of the second world war, and find three separate documents detailing enlistment information and other data pertaining to my grandfathers' brother, my great uncle, who was killed in action flying a B-29 Liberator over German skies in 1944. It was incredible to be able to print this information out and show it to my grandfather, as well as to now be able to add it to all of the original military documents I have from my grandfather.
The Newspaper Archives section I found to be equally as interesting. There are literally hundreds of thousands of articles listed from newspapers all over the country. If a student wants to research the political views expressed in the New York Herald during the Roosevelt Administration, the information is only a few clicks away. You simply type in keywords or phrases, individual newspaper names or search the entire archive, and period of time you would like to search. This will bring up any article which would contain pertinent information to your search. I really liked that it shows you an image of the exact article, almost as if you are holding the actual newspaper right in front of you, and it even highlights the information regarding your search, allowing you to zoom in and out on the page. I encourage all of you to check this site out for useful information to use in your digital textbook chapters, I certainly found a wealth of information to include in mine.
Footnote.com is a research tool that contains more than 70 million original historical documents and photos. Being an avid lover and student of history, I certainly know just how important it is to have reliable sources from which to pull research data. With footnote.com, many of the historical documents are from such renowned institutions as the National Archives, and the Library of Congress. Information on the site in bundled by sections or by historical eras, such as the Civil War period, The Holocaust Collection, World War II, Vietnam, Native American Collection, Black History, A Newspapers Archive, and an Interactive Census Project. The Interactive Census Project is particularly interesting in that it allows you to find and search information pertaining to census data all the way back to the year 1860. This particular tool could be used in math classes, geography classes, government/political courses, and particularly history courses.
Perusing through the site, I myself was able to search military and pension records from the time of the second world war, and find three separate documents detailing enlistment information and other data pertaining to my grandfathers' brother, my great uncle, who was killed in action flying a B-29 Liberator over German skies in 1944. It was incredible to be able to print this information out and show it to my grandfather, as well as to now be able to add it to all of the original military documents I have from my grandfather.
The Newspaper Archives section I found to be equally as interesting. There are literally hundreds of thousands of articles listed from newspapers all over the country. If a student wants to research the political views expressed in the New York Herald during the Roosevelt Administration, the information is only a few clicks away. You simply type in keywords or phrases, individual newspaper names or search the entire archive, and period of time you would like to search. This will bring up any article which would contain pertinent information to your search. I really liked that it shows you an image of the exact article, almost as if you are holding the actual newspaper right in front of you, and it even highlights the information regarding your search, allowing you to zoom in and out on the page. I encourage all of you to check this site out for useful information to use in your digital textbook chapters, I certainly found a wealth of information to include in mine.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Podcasting in Education
Over the past few years, the use of podcasting in education has increased quite steadily. The use of podcasting is an excellent way to supplement lesson plans and the overall learning experience. In 2004 for example, Duke University made headlines when they distributed 1,600 recorder-equipped ipods to their incoming freshamn and a handful of faculty. The students were then able to download leactures, songs, and historical speeches, as well as produce their own content. According to the University's findings, students reported that the ipods enhanced their learning experience, with 75 percent of freshman students using at least one ipod features for academic purposes. Faculty reported greater students engagement and interest in class discussions, field research, and independent projects incorporating ipod use.
Other examples of classroom use of podcasting - At Drexel University, a chemistry professor assigned archived lectures that the students could then listen to for homework, then using his class time to review problems and spend time on other atcivities. AT Winter Park High School in Florida, the Orchestra creates podcasts, including some with video, to distribute sound clips, news and information about their award winning music program. It certainly is exciting to see such creative and innovative ideas stem from these new technologies.
On the other side of the spectrum, there has been some concern about whether students will stop going to classes in which the professors post their lectures using podcasts. Why should they go to lectures when they are available on the web for them to listen to whenever they choose? Duke University's ipod experience study revealed that the faculty did not find that lecture attendance decreased significantly with recorded lectures. The University of Washington conducted a similar podcasting program and the results also noted a negligible impact of podcasting on class attendance.
My brother, who teaches earth science for the Souderton School District, uses podcasting on a regular basis with his students. He podcasts his daily lectures and classroom activities so that any student who may have been absent can then simply check out his podcast to see what they might have missed. I firmly believe that the use of podcasting will only increase in our classrooms and will definately benefit the learning experiences of our future students.
Other examples of classroom use of podcasting - At Drexel University, a chemistry professor assigned archived lectures that the students could then listen to for homework, then using his class time to review problems and spend time on other atcivities. AT Winter Park High School in Florida, the Orchestra creates podcasts, including some with video, to distribute sound clips, news and information about their award winning music program. It certainly is exciting to see such creative and innovative ideas stem from these new technologies.
On the other side of the spectrum, there has been some concern about whether students will stop going to classes in which the professors post their lectures using podcasts. Why should they go to lectures when they are available on the web for them to listen to whenever they choose? Duke University's ipod experience study revealed that the faculty did not find that lecture attendance decreased significantly with recorded lectures. The University of Washington conducted a similar podcasting program and the results also noted a negligible impact of podcasting on class attendance.
My brother, who teaches earth science for the Souderton School District, uses podcasting on a regular basis with his students. He podcasts his daily lectures and classroom activities so that any student who may have been absent can then simply check out his podcast to see what they might have missed. I firmly believe that the use of podcasting will only increase in our classrooms and will definately benefit the learning experiences of our future students.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Thinkfinity
My group and I chose to explore the online tool Thinkfinty. There are numerous excellent features available to use for multiple disciplines in education, but this tool would be especially helpful to history/social studies educators. Some noteworthy areas I explored were; In your state, From our Community (discussion forums), Today in History, Blogs, Education News, Lesson Plans, and Interactive Tools. Interactive tools included a letter generator, with which students in grades K - 12 can practice formal and informal letter writing, which I though could be extremely helpful for many teachers. On the bottom of the page there are also a multitude of links, including, National Geographic Expeditions, which had great material for geography as well as social studies lessons, and a link we focused much of our attention on, Smithsonian's History Explorer.
This specific tool was designed and developed by the National Museum of American History, and includes multidisciplinary content for all subjects in grades K - 12. ALthough it has a wealth of material, one of its limitations is that it is geared mostly for history/social studies educators and learners. Along with this, it concerns strictly American History. This tool includes literally hundreds of lesson plans/activities, Interactives/Media, Professional Development, Web Links, and an excellent tool which allows you to view photos and descriptions of hundreds of artifacts in a Virtual Museum. It is also extremely helpful that you can search for resources by grade level, resource type, or historical era. I found this tool very easy to navigate and I believe that both young students as well as High School students would find this tool of immense help when researching topics, or developing a lesson plan.
I explored this tool with a friend of mine who is an American Government teacher at a local high school. He found an excellent lesson plan that coincides with his current topic of the landmark case Brown Vs. the Board of Education of Topeka. With this lesson plan, students would examine both the integrationist and segregationist arguments from Brown vs. the Board of Ed. through role play and explore the impact of the Supreme Courts' decision through a primary source photographic analysis activity. He will be using this lesson this week in his classroom and I am very anxious to see how well it worked out for him. I will certainly update this post at the end of the week as to the results.
This specific tool was designed and developed by the National Museum of American History, and includes multidisciplinary content for all subjects in grades K - 12. ALthough it has a wealth of material, one of its limitations is that it is geared mostly for history/social studies educators and learners. Along with this, it concerns strictly American History. This tool includes literally hundreds of lesson plans/activities, Interactives/Media, Professional Development, Web Links, and an excellent tool which allows you to view photos and descriptions of hundreds of artifacts in a Virtual Museum. It is also extremely helpful that you can search for resources by grade level, resource type, or historical era. I found this tool very easy to navigate and I believe that both young students as well as High School students would find this tool of immense help when researching topics, or developing a lesson plan.
I explored this tool with a friend of mine who is an American Government teacher at a local high school. He found an excellent lesson plan that coincides with his current topic of the landmark case Brown Vs. the Board of Education of Topeka. With this lesson plan, students would examine both the integrationist and segregationist arguments from Brown vs. the Board of Ed. through role play and explore the impact of the Supreme Courts' decision through a primary source photographic analysis activity. He will be using this lesson this week in his classroom and I am very anxious to see how well it worked out for him. I will certainly update this post at the end of the week as to the results.
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