M3:

Molly Brooke Threadgill

 

·         URLs: What do URLs tell you/students about web sites?  

“If someone gives you a URL, very often you can tell what and where it is by reading its parts.” (Doering & Roblyer, 2013, p. 216) Every URL has a “domain designator” and you can differentiate certain kinds of sites from others just by looking at the last 3 letters (e.g. .gov, .org, .edu, .com, .net etc.).

·         Search Engines: How can learning to use search engines help you/students find better information?

In my M2 blog post I wrote extensively about how valuable and helpful Google has been to me as a teacher. Major advantages of using a search engine are that often times, like with Google, you can type in the word Sunflower in the search box and instantly everything relating to Sunflowers magically appears on your screen. You can toggle through the different parts of Google- Google Images, Google News, Google Shopping, Google Scholar, Google Videos etc.- without typing the word in again and see every possible option for searching for Sunflowers. Teaching your students how to to research within a search engine is so important!

·         Internet Tool: Choose one Internet Tool (in the section beginning on p. 223) and discuss how you might use it in a classroom.

As an art teacher I see the benefit and am eager to begin using an e-Portfolio site such as Artsonia to have an up-to-date way for parents to see what we’ve been doing in art each day! I usually have to keep all my students’ art work until the end of the year so I can pick each student’s best piece(s) for our year-end art shows. Having something like this would be a wonderful way to parent’s to engage and ask their children specific questions about what’s been going on in art! Any way to strike up conversation between parents & children is a HUGE plus in my book! Also, the student’s could learn how to digitally photograph and upload their work to the site- very very cool too!

 

·         Web-Based Lesson: Discuss and link to a web site where students could access or you could create a web-based lesson. (discussed in Chapter 8)

Collaborative projects are beneficial & popular in education today. Google Docs or also even Wikispaces would be sites teachers could use to help with web-based lessons. They could do the initial lesson & give the assignment on Wikispaces and then the students could use Google Docs to help them complete the project together!

·         Favorite Web Sites: Finally, pick two web sites that you feel are your favorite. Post the web sites and talk about why they will be beneficial to teachers and/or students. Use at least two references to chapter 7 and 8 content (for each) that makes these web sites effective resources.