Twitter: Week 9

@weareteachers

One of the resources I found on twitter was from @weareteachers. They posted an article "The Teacher's Quick Guide to Pinterest." This site allows users to "pin" any information they have on an interactive "bulletin board." It is a very similar site to Delicious. This article makes it easy for teachers to get started using Pinterest. The reason that this site is useful to teachers is that it can provide many ready made lesson plans made by other teachers.  The only "bad" thing about Pinterest is that it's an "invite-only," however you can sign-up and request for an invite and after that you can start pinning.

@teachersnet


I read an interesting article linked from @teachersnet. This article was titled "Teach Anger Management – Five Ways to Help Students Deal With Anger Constructively." Many times we think that because we are not dealing with SPED students that we will not encounter students who are emotional. My very first year teaching I had a student who would become very violent when he was angry. Being a first -year teacher, I was shocked and did not know the best strategies on how to deal with this behavior in the classroom. As teachers, it is difficult to deal with these issues in the classroom because we do not know the best ways to help students. This article is great for any student, teacher, parent, or individual who wants to learn how to help students deal with these emotions. The following are five tips in which to help:


1. Teach students the difference between primary and secondary emotions
2. Help students recognize physical manifestations of anger
3. Teach students positive self-talk
4. Tell students to own their emotions
5. Teach students to keep their power

Twitter: Week 8

@PBSteachers 

This week on Twitter I followed @PBSteachers. They posted an article that discusses how an elementary school targets students with disabilities early on. Some of the strategies they use at this school is to use art and technology as an early intervention to help lessen the dropout rates that seem to occur twice as much more with LD students as opposed to their peers. What I found interesting in this video was when they showed two products from a student one using a computer word processor program, while the other was simply hand written. When the LD student used the computer program his work was on grade level, because many times students with dyslexia tend to take longer to process information when reading and struggle writing information down. Overall, this video shows how computers, iPads, arts and digital audio programs are great tools that allow students to learn at their own pace and succeeding.

@21stCenturyTch

One of the resources that will be very useful from this follower is an article for the Top 10 Technology Blogs for Education. After reading this blog I have already subscribed to many of the blogs on here so I can have more resources that I can use. My favorite two blogs from this top ten are http://blog.web20classroom.org/ where they provide many web2.0 technologies to use in the classroom and http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/.

Delicious: Week 7

After learning more about WebQuests, I searched on Delicious for a stack that could possibly have links to more information on WebQuests. I enjoy looking at other teacher created WebQuests to give me ideas of what I can use in my classroom. By searching "WebQuests" on the delicious search I found a stack titled "WebQuests" by amast. This stack provides many useful links such as how to create WebQuests, how to make webquests, and examples. The following are some links found on this stack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyht-ehlAWY

http://webquest.org/index.php

Tools: WebQuests and Surveys

Tool: WebQuest

A tool that will help students inquire with technologies are WebQuests. Webquests are a great tool to where students learn to work in collaborative groups, think critically, and explore "open-ended student directed research projects." Through the use of WebQuests, the students are able to all share in their individual strengths in a team. For a WebQuest there are different roles for each student. This holds every student accountable for their job in their group research project. What is great about WebQuests are that they can be used for any subject.

The way I would use a WebQuest would be in science. An example of where students can use WebQuests:
Grade Level: 3rd Grade
Subject: Science
Topic: Weather
Learning Objectives: Students will explore the different types of weather: tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzard, thunderstorm
How students will use this tool: Students will research information about each of the types of weather. Each student will have a role either that of the Designer-find a layout on PowerPoint that will help present information found, Researcher-use the websites to gather important information, Manager-make sure everything is getting done, help whoever needs help, Recorder-will write down the important research found.

Tool: Survey

Another tool that can be useful in the classroom are surveys. Surveys can be found online such as (SurveyMonkey,Cool Surveys, Zoomerang). These can be used in all subject areas. However, a way I would use surveys in my classroom is create a survey where we gather data from our class to create a bar graph or pictograph.

Grade Level: 3rd Grade
Subject: Math
Topic: Bar Graphs/Pictographs
Learning Objectives: Students will explore bar graphs and pictographs using the information gathered from the online surveys.
How students will use this tool: Students will fill out the survey. Once the survey is filled out as a class we will explore the data. With the data gathered, the students will create a bargraph/pictograph.