Will My Students Use Wikipedia?

I will encourage my students to use Wikipedia. I understand that not everything on the site is 100% accurate, but Wikipedia provides well organized information and will make finding and sorting through resources easier. I will not allow them to use Wikipedia as a source in a bibliography but I will encourage my future students to use the site to locate credible sources.

Think Aloud

Virgle?

We have been discussing the importance of using credible sites. Our next assignment is to create a Think Aloud that explains how to analyze a site and determine its credibility. For my Think Aloud, I found a site that presents plans for a corporately funded Mars mission. More than that, it presents an entire outline for Mars colonization. At first glance the site appears credible. It is hosted by Google. The project is called Virgle, which comes from the company names Virgin and Google, the two companies funding the supposed mission. The site appears to be a genuine Google project, unfortunately (and much to the disappointment of all of us who were hoping companies would pick up where NASA left off when Obama cut the budget) the project does not exist. Google maintains the facade throughout the site offering only subtle hints (like Guitar Hero II skills as an application requirement). A link at the bottom of the Q&A page leads to a page not listed in the Virgle links where the hoax is finally revealed to be Google's annual April Fool's joke.

Virgle

PowerPoint Quiz

science quiz

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NETS Credibility

In class today, the teacher discussed credibility of webpages. We watched two student-made videos and viewed a PowerPoint. She showed us how we can verify a source. The PowerPoint linked to several examples of sites which were not credible. Learning this information will meet NETS standard 3. Understanding web page credibility demonstrates understanding of global social issues and responsibility in an evolving digital culture.

SMART Board Demonstration

This week we experimented with SMART Boards. The class split up into groups. Each group was assigned a subject and had to find an activity to demonstrate. Out group decided to teach a chemistry lesson about the basic structure of an atom. We found a program online from the creaters of the SMART Board that worked like a PowerPoint. We also showed the class how they could use the SMART Board notepad draw a model of an atom, like the one below.

The other groups presented several interesting activities. One of the groups demonstrated a virtual frog dissection. Even if the teacher wanted the class to preform a real dissection, virtual demonstrations like these could familiarize the students with the tools and processes and make direction easier to follow.

On the other hand, out group spent two class periods getting our SMART Board to work correctly. At the end of our second period, I looked up a YouTube video that showed six year olds demonstrating how to callibrate a SMART Board. We got it working in the last two minutes of that period. Then, on the day we presented we found out that the computer set up for the class to use did not have the SMART Board notebook software. So we had to wait while the program loaded. In hindsight, we probably could have just used Windows Paint to model the atom like I did to create the Argon atom below.

I have seen a SMART Board used effectively in a chemistry class, but any teacher who want to use the technology needs to be aware that there might be problems.

Magazine Cover

We used PowerPoint to create magazine covers with pictures of ourselves and information about the classes we will be teaching.