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Here
are the notes from this past week in class:
We
began by participating in a community builder activity called
"Color Sharing". When designing community builders, remember to
attend carefully to questions that you plan ask students to
answer. Some questions may prove to be troubling for students to
answer and may prove to be a disruption to the community you're
trying to build. Examples of questions that should be avoided
include: Who is your best friend? and Where does your father
work? We discussed ways that these types of questions may end up
excluding students rather than including all.. In
class,we reviewed the Children's Social Studies Website Review
and Analysis assignment. The assignment is located on this site
for your reference. If you have any questions regarding this
assignment, be sure to contact me through email or phone.
In class, we visited some webcams and
discussed their potential benefit to a social studies classroom.
The webcam sites that we visited in class include:
Visiting Earthcam:
http://www.earthcam.com
Visiting
Earthcam for Kids:
http://www.earthcamforkids.com
Visiting
Wildcam Africa:
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/wildcamafrica/wildcam.html
Visiting
Various US Cities:
http://www.alaska.net/~spdskatr/top40places_320.htm
As a rule, do not have
students search for webcams online. There is too much potential
that students could come across inappropriate websites (even if
they are using search engines designed for children). Instead,
plan carefully to select webcams that enhance your social
studies lessons and show the webcams whole group. This will help
to keep any potential problems away from students.
We
spent some time thinking about technology when creating a website.
When thinking of the website that you will create to represent
your completed assignments in this class, it might be best to
stary
by answering the following questions for yourself: Why might teachers create a
website? What considerations might we make when thinking about
website design? Who is the audience? What message or information
do we want to communicate? How do we keep the site alive?
In class, we discussed the first
checkpoint of online portfolios that is due next week. Students
are to come
to class with two hand-drawn pictures -- one of your homepage
(the first page that viewers come to when visiting your website)
and a navigational outline of your website. Next week, we will
spend time reviewing the
web portfolio assignment. For the assignment, students may want to
consider adding the following information to their site: 1.
Introduction paragraph/letter
2. Philosophy of Teaching statement
3. Background Information
4. Understandings of teaching social studies
5. Children's Social Studies Website Review
6. Virtual Field Trip
7. Internet Resource Guide
8. Community Service
9. Future Goals
10. Contact Information In
class, we spent some time using Netscape Composer to begin
creating web-folios. There are many online tutorials available to
help you become comfortable using Compose. Click here to view
one of the tutorials.
That's all for this week. Keep reading, keep learning and keep
coming to class!
~Kim |
