Taking the Wiki Walk-Through

I just took the Wiki Walk-Through, and boy did I learn a lot! If you are not familiar with wikis, like me, this is a great resource for learning all about them. This site even provides links for wikis that you can explore. I really enjoyed looking at the First Grade Learning to Write wiki. The children in this class started writing a story and posted it on a wiki for other people to add to it. I think that is a very clever use for a wiki. 

I never realized there are so many reasons why we should use wikis. I particularly like that wikis cause people to work together and require us to get our creative juices flowing. Also, wikis can help us become better writers as we can continually edit when we use them.

My favorite thing about this walk-through is that it provided ideas for wikis based on subject, and even age. There is even a whole page of ideas for using wikis with young children. I really love the idea of making a Where is Wanda wiki, which is basically an online version of Flat Stanley. This is a way for children to learn all about the world around them through pictures and text. I also really like the idea of a Twaditionwiki where children can share their traditions. In a world where our classrooms are filled with so much diversity, this is a great idea for bringing a group of students together.

This walk-through also provides a really helpful set of questions that you can answer in order to prepare yourself to make a wonderful wiki. Sometimes, when we are trying something new, we do not know where to begin, but this site helps to eliminate those issues.

My Experience with Website Evaluation

I just completed my first website evaluation. I feel like I took a lot more from this experience than I had initially expected. When I normally peruse a site, I do not pay attention to who authored/created it, when it was written, or the accuracy of the information. I guess you could say I have been way too trusting. My experience with a website evaluation was eye-opening in that I now recognize that I need to pay more attention to what I am reading on the internet. Anyone out there could create a website, even though they have no qualifications. Also, I could be reading information that is way out-of-date. I will definitely pay more attention to what I am reading on the internet in the future.

Since I completed this activity, I feel like I know a lot more about how to complete a website evaluation. I now know what makes a website reliable and useful. Overall, I learned what to look for to ensure a website is reliable and useful for my students. I found the evaluation sheet very helpful because it guided me through the activity. I am going to make copies of it to refer to when I am evaluating websites in my career. The process of evaluating is actually quite simple, so it should be no problem for me to complete when I am looking for websites to use in my classroom. 

Welcome to My Blog, Here's Another

As I work toward becoming a teacher, I am always searching for new ideas that I can use in my future classroom. I spend a lot of my free time sifting through the blogs of other teachers in order to find interesting activities and lessons. One of my favorites that I have found is Ms. Cassidy's Classroom Blog. It is filled with wonderful updates and pictures of what is happening in an actual classroom over the course of a school year. The crisp, organized layout is eye-catching and refreshing. Ms. Cassidy also provides a gadget that allows access to her class's twitter page, which is a great glimpse into their day-to-day learning.

My absolute favorite part of this blog is that it links to a blog for each of the children in the class. This allows followers to keep track of the individual learning and progress of each child. It provides a beautiful snapshot of what each child likes and what they are creating in school. After looking through each child's blog, I am floored to see how capable six-year-old children are of successfully using technology. I also really enjoyed seeing their attempts at spelling certain big words.

I think this blog is a great resource for teachers because not only does it give ideas for teaching, it also provides ideas for how to use technology in a classroom of young children. As technology advances and becomes even more present in today's world, teachers will need to be able to implement technology into the classroom. If I get a job in a kindergarten classroom when I start teaching next year, I will definitely be making a classroom blog and a blog for each of my students. Who knows, they may teach me things I did not even know about technology!

Course Expectations

I am a senior Child and Family Studies major with a concentration in PreK through Kindergarten and a component in Special Education. I am interning in a preschool special education classroom this semester, and next semester I will complete my student teaching before graduating in May. I am excited about taking this TPTE 486 course because I think it will teach me a lot of ways to use technology that I can possibly implement in my very first classroom next year. Since I am working with very young children, I am curious to find ways to use technology that will benefit them. I am very familiar with working with Mac since I have been using it for the last six years. Hopefully my prior knowledge will be beneficial to me in this course this semester.  Technology does not make me nervous. However, I am very accustomed to searching around to figure out how to use technology. I hope this course will teach me the proper methods, so I will no longer need to search.