http://www.scholastic.com/magicschoolbus/
This site is full of activities that teach and demonstrate science concepts. There are instructions for experiments, games that test your knowledge about weather, the human body, insects, and more. There are also clips of certain episodes of The Magic School Bus TV show. I would use this site to help kids to learn basic science concepts. I would love it if a computer specialist would let my students investigate the site for a few computer class times. I'd also use it as a center in my classroom.
http://www.scholastic.com/kids/weather/
This site lets you adjust the polar temperature, equator temperature, and the humididty and has an animated picture that shows what effect the different temperatures and humidity have on weather. It would be a great site to use if teaching a lesson on the poles, equator and/or humidity. It wouldn't take very long to investigate the site, so maybe I'd have it available throughout the day for a couple of days for students to look at and play with during any free time.
http://www.scholastic.com/kids/president/
This site makes you the president, has you pick advisors, justify who you picked, and balance the national budget. It's much, much simpler than real life, but it would give students a chance to think about the responsibilities of our country's president and evaluate what they think is most important. After picking and justifying advisors and balancing the budget, a newspaper page comes up with an analysis of what you've done. In my class, I would take my students to the computer lab abd have each of them complete this activity and print off their newspaper page. We would then discuss why people made the decisions they did.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Intro to the Internet
WWW stands for the world wide web which is a collection of resources that link to others and can be accessed by using a web browser.
To explain the Internet to my elementary age students I would tell them that it is a whole bunch of resources, like the encyclopedia, newspapers, magazines, etc. that you can use from your computer. I might bring in a set of encyclopedias and have my students try to find a very specific piece of information. I would then show them how to do a search for the same information. They could see how quickly information can be found using the Internet and that they can find the same information in lots of different places on the Internet. I would probably just explain the Internet as a great resource for finding information. They would find out that you can play games and buy and sell things on their own.
URL stands for uniform resource locator and it is the codes/words/address that are used to find websites.
Some common error messages you might encounter when using the Internet are:
401-Unauthorized: this means that you are not allowed on a website because you are not a member of a certain group or you have an invalid password for accessing the site.
404-Not Found: the website you are trying to access no longer exists or the server can't be found.
503-Service Unavailable: your Internet connection is down.
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language which is the computer language that makes it possible to click on the text of one site to link to a new site.
HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. These are the rules computers follow to transfer files through hypertext (links)
I see the Internet playing a moderate role in my future classroom. I think it is a great resource and that anyone can benefit form knowing how to use it effectively. I also think it is important for kids to be able to find information in books and to actually manipulate resources. I would use the Internet for small group projects that are to be done quickly. I would limit how much information can come from the Internet with projects that have a longer time frame. I want my students to be able to use the Internet, but i also want them to be able to use other forms of resources.
To explain the Internet to my elementary age students I would tell them that it is a whole bunch of resources, like the encyclopedia, newspapers, magazines, etc. that you can use from your computer. I might bring in a set of encyclopedias and have my students try to find a very specific piece of information. I would then show them how to do a search for the same information. They could see how quickly information can be found using the Internet and that they can find the same information in lots of different places on the Internet. I would probably just explain the Internet as a great resource for finding information. They would find out that you can play games and buy and sell things on their own.
URL stands for uniform resource locator and it is the codes/words/address that are used to find websites.
Some common error messages you might encounter when using the Internet are:
401-Unauthorized: this means that you are not allowed on a website because you are not a member of a certain group or you have an invalid password for accessing the site.
404-Not Found: the website you are trying to access no longer exists or the server can't be found.
503-Service Unavailable: your Internet connection is down.
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language which is the computer language that makes it possible to click on the text of one site to link to a new site.
HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. These are the rules computers follow to transfer files through hypertext (links)
I see the Internet playing a moderate role in my future classroom. I think it is a great resource and that anyone can benefit form knowing how to use it effectively. I also think it is important for kids to be able to find information in books and to actually manipulate resources. I would use the Internet for small group projects that are to be done quickly. I would limit how much information can come from the Internet with projects that have a longer time frame. I want my students to be able to use the Internet, but i also want them to be able to use other forms of resources.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
iMovie Assignment
I think that movie making has great instructional potential. The manipulative, audio, and visual aspects of it could make any concept it was teaching more memorable, but I don't think most elementary kids could create a movie. I think they could shoot footage, but the editing would be a bit too much. I think they would learn the concepts they were making the movie about (they'd see it so much, how could they not?) but I think the time required could definitely be used more productively. They could learn a lot more in the same amount of time. Unless the concept you're trying to teach is technology, I think it's usually better to use simple, less time consuming technology. If I were to use something like iMovie in my class, I would make it an extended whole class project. Maybe we would record footage of things we learned throughout the year and then make a movie at the end of the year that would function as a review of what we learned.
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