Hans Rosling Presentation

Part of our assignment this week was to view the video link to Hans Rosling's presentation about data. This was a fantastic video! I took Statistics over the summer and was thinking about all the different ways to graph information and how to interpret the data. This would have been a great addition to that class! So one of the most interesting things to watch in the video is how Rosling has taken data from the 1960's to 1990's and turned them into animations. One of the statistics he used was to see if there was a correlation between small families and longer lives. He used varying sizes of circles to represent populations of countries. The circles moved from the 1960's to 1990's, showing that yes indeed there was a correlation between smaller families and longevity. What was great was seeing the data in motion. He and others have started a "non-profit venture" called Gapminder. Which is software that will link data to animations. What a great way to learn information.

Bloom's Taxonomy

This week I have been editing and re-editing my WebQuest. I had to step away from it for a few days because I am becoming very frustrated with the entire process. In addition we are to design a rubric to go along with the WebQuest. Since I have been having a difficult time with the WebQuest I have had a difficult time with the rubric. For some reason I just don't get the WebQuest "idea."

This week we are to blog about Bloom's Taxonomy. This is not a new topic for me; I have encountered this in a few of my other educational classes. This is the first time that I've actually had to use it! Bloom's Taxonomy is based on "Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation." It requires the student to use critical and creative thinking to answer the questions. I see this as useful when a teacher is trying to get their students to think at a higher level instead of relying on just retelling or recalling information from a text. I think by redesigning a basic question and turn it into something that requires more thinking and deeper knowledge of a subject is a good thing! The designing of my WebQuest has really made me dig deeper for questions to ask my students. I have printed out the list of "useful verbs" to refer to. I think with some practice I will be able to grasp this concept much more easier as time goes on. It's been challenging, but I really have enjoyed soaking up all this information.

WebQuest; The Pitfalls

I just finished watching the video of Bernie Dodge explaining what to avoid in designing a WebQuest. I took notes as I watched and discovered that some of the information was really a "no brainer" for me. Like don't choose an inappropriate topic. Dodge also states you should avoid designing WebQuests that are covered well by text books, avoid factual recall, and procedures. I was thinking as I heard this "what is covered well by text books? Is my topic of explorers covered well by text books?" I'm really not too sure about this. I'm also not sure by what Dodge meant when he says "give a scaled down version of what adults do" and "when do adults use this knowledge." I liked Dodge's taxonomy though. It did give me a better idea of what his vision for a WebQuest is by breaking it down into "life verbs" and "classroom verbs" and showing what overlapped; apply, analyze, and explain. I hope I'm on the right track with my WebQuest. I may be more confused now than when I began. I'll be blogging more about my journey in building my WebQuest.

Week 5 Making a WebQuest

I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of creating my WebQuest. I have enjoyed choosing my topic of Explorers to the New World and finding appropriate links to help my students.That has definitely been the easy part of my journey! I have also been reading and searching different WebQuests and have even found a few that were about my topic of Explorers. One of them was even pretty similiar to the one I had envisioned mine looking like. It had links to different explorers and maps and it also wanted a powerpoint done to showcase the information the students had found to present to the class. I feel like a copycat in a way even though I found it after my "brainstorm" week. So now I am thinking should I go ahead with my initial design or should I try and do something different? I am also having thoughts that I am totally off track with my "idea" of what a WebQuest really is! Today I am going to continue my reading and research on WebQuest and hope that I will in the end prove to myself that I can do this!

WebQuest !

This is another week of new technology for me. This week is WebQuest! I have done my "brainstorming" for my topic and have settled on Early Explorers to America. I thought it would be interesting to tackle a topic I have never done before. WebQuest should be a very interesting project to do and I look forward to learning more about it. At the moment all the new information I've taken in so far and we are just at week 4 feels a little overwhelming. I will be doing a little google searching tonight to see if I can find other WebQuests that teachers have done on Explorers and to see what other information and links I can dig up!

Creative Commons

This week we were to take a look at Creative Commons "a copyright-free music and art site."
http://creativecommons.org/ this is a non profit organization that offers free licenses for people to be able to have credit for their work. This allows others to be able to "mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof."
In my opinion this is simply ingenius! I started looking around their site a bit and found ccLearn a division of the Creative Commons that is an open resource for education Wikipedia is one of these resources. I also took a look at DiscoverEd., OpenEd., and Student Journalism 2.o that were listed under the "project" tab for ccLearn.
I had never considered copyright issues for teachers in the classroom. ccLearn is a great idea that is supportive of reusing and sharing educational resources.

e-Portfolio

I've decided to continue using my website through weebly. I like the layout and its been fairly straight forward in using it. I think it looks professional and I hope as I continue building it the end product will look professional as well.
My link to this site is http://teenalafleche.weebly.com .