Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Exploring Video Resources

When looking at all the different choices to explore to assist students in my program I found that the most useful site happened to be TeacherTube. I found that it was more reliable, and had better information that was much more pertinent to the areas that our students are studying. I was not at all impressed with YouTube or Clipblast. The grievance that I have with YouTube is that there is so much negativity associated with this site and the possiblility of downloading a video that is totally inappropriate or meaningless is real. I had a much more difficult time trying to locate videos that were educational in nature (i.e. Lanugage arts, mathematics or history.) With the Clipblast site, I had difficulty in viewing the videos as they were constantly stopping to buffer which I found to be quite distracting and time consuming. The potential for using the data that I did located is limitless, especially with TeacherTube. Some of our students are learning how to construct line graphs, cite term papers, reading And then there were none, and pursuing knowledge of weathering. Summaries of these topics were easily accessible on TeacherTube. I plan on refering students to these sites to assist them in their classroom studies. It would also be beneficial to parents in discerning what is being taught in their child's classroom.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Feelings about Blogging

Now that I have completed the first 3 assignments for this class, I find that I'm not as techno-savvy as I had once thought and that I am both a visual and kinesthetic learner. I now know how disabled students feel when they can't seem to grasp concepts or ideas. What a beneficial tool blogging would be for those of us who find conventional learning difficult. Lessons could be designed to include all types of learners and since the "younger" generation is much more adept at this technology stuff, they would eat it up!!! I often hear students complaining how boring and mundane their classrooms are. Blogging, introduced into the class curriculum, would definitely liven things up, make things more interesting.