Mardi Gras

Hope everyone is having a great break from classes and enjoying this holiday. It is nice to have a small break before having to hit the books again. I am enjoying the time off from school and work. Stay safe everyone and watch out for flying beads.

Color Blindness

Thanks for the information on color blindness. One of the students in our grade level has this issue and the info. helped me understand his visual challenges better.

Question 10

10. What are some of the strategies for keeping the documents of a Website organized (Chapt. 6)?

There are many different ways that you can keep the documents of a website organized. One way that you can accomplish this is to group them by categories. These categories may include kid friendly search engines, content resources, simulations, and research tools. You can also create a category for students to publish their work and a category for collaborating with students from other schools. Within each category, you can arrange the information based on the educational subject that it covers. By using this one particular strategy, you can make your website user friendly.

Question 7

7. How successful are you at finding information online? What are your personal search habits (Chapt. 4)?

I am very successful at finding information online. I rarely run into problems locating what I am looking for. When I want to know about something, I always use www.google.com to find out the information. Personally, I don't generally take the time to use the different search strategies that are available. I type in the words I am interested in and weed through the results. Occasionally, I have trouble finding exactly what I am looking for. When this problem occurs, I use the search strategies like +, -, " ", AND, OR, etc. to help me locate my information.

Web Design

I liked creating my own web page. It still needs a lot of work to be totally functional, but I can see how useful it would be in the classroom. Web pages are a great way to get information out to parents. They can also provide new ideas to other teachers for future projects. The kids can also see their work posted on the web page, and kids really enjoying seeing their work out on the internet.

Concept Mapping

I really enjoyed the concept mapping exercise. The inspiration software seems to be very user friendly. Like most assignments, deciding on a topic became the hardest part. I did my concept maps on a money lesson for first graders. I work in a first grade classroom and understand how hard the details of money can be for the kids. I think that they would really enjoy seeing the concept map and following the links to online activities. I can see how this would be a useful tool for making a lesson plan because you can see everything right there in front of you.

College Professor and Facebook

I went to the following site http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i22/22a00104.htm and read the article. I don't feel that the professor really crossed the line. I think it was accidental and not intended for everyone to see. With that being said, I do think that as a teacher you have to monitor your words and actions closely. You shouldn't write something on your Facebook account if you wouldn't be comfortable with everyone reading it. Even when you have your account restricted to friends, it doesn't mean that those friends won't tell somebody the things that you wrote.

Teachers, no matter what level they teach, are held to a higher standard. It might not necessarily be fair, but that is how people feel. No matter where you post things, you should always be aware of the possibility that your students or their parents may read it, and you should post accordingly.