Inspiration is a great software for classrooms. Not only can a teacher or student create graphic organizers to represent a concept in the course of study, but also he can also move that concept map into Word and make it even more productive from there. I think it is an awesome tool and I would definitely invest in it for my classroom. As a social studies teacher, I am always looking for visual stimuli to keep my students interested and excited about learning. Additionally, as a future secondary education teacher and hopefully grades 9-12, I like to keep things challenging and enriching in the classroom. I believe that Inspiration helps me to accomplish both of those tasks.
That being said, here a few ideas of how I would like to incorporate Inspiration into my classroom.
1. Trace the causes of wars: specifically WWI and WWII
2. Explaining the branches of government
3. Describing the process of how a bill becomes a law
4. Explaining the characteristics of the multiple types of government
5. Explaining the U.S. system of checks and balances
6. Describing the phases of the French Revolution
7. Explaining the American Electoral system for the presidential election
8. Explaining the foreign, domestic and monetary policies of a particular president
9. Describing the three major world religions and their basic tenants/principles
10. Explaining the Circular Flow Model of Economics
11. Explaining the political spectrum in a particular era of history
In class, the web resources we have used have all been extremely helpful. In the past, I have found multiple resources to use but not some of the great databases that were introduced in class. My favorite are the NCLOR and UnitedStreaming. Once again, as a social studies teacher who may use several power points throughout my teaching it is great to be able to illustrate a point through a video clip. Unitedstreaming has a wealth of videos at hand that may be accessed and I plan on using them a lot both to stream and download. They also have links to PBS videos which is also wonderful and Frontline documentaries are one of my favorite sets of historical and informational classroom videos. My teachers in higher level classes showed them often and I plan to use them myself to add life to my classroom.
As for NCLOR, I absolutely love it. I found sites such as historyanimated.com from it that animates the movements and progression of troops in almost all majors wars in history. Also, from NCLOR, I found a huge multitude of lesson plans and classroom resources. The maps are found are phenomenal as well. I know that with these resources at hand, I can become an even greater teacher and add technological life to my classroom!
Monday, September 26, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Wonderful World of Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking is a great tool and resource for teachers. A teacher has the ability to connect with other educators and see their individual bookmarks. It is the ultimate in collaboration and communication among educators. Maybe you have a great lesson plan website that will help me out. As long as we are connected through a social bookmarking network, I can see that link. Also, I can put tags on my bookmarks to make them more specific to those in my networks or even for my own comfort depending what I am looking for.
In my own classroom, I believe they have a lot of benefit. Social bookmarks can be seen by my students as they have the ability to check out pages that I have linked on there and also access a wide variety of resources that are relevant to our class. They may be cool facts, homework helpers or even just a nice supplement to the day's material that I can choose to assign for homework. I think Social Bookmarking is an awesome tool that can help my students to be informed about the class and also parents can check out my bookmarks and maybe understand what their children are learning about. I have the wealth of the World Wide Web to add to my Diigo page and allow my students to grow in and out of the classroom. When we do work in the lab rather than writing out a whole web page on the board, I can save time and keep my students attention by having them just simply connect to my Diigo page from the class website.
For me now as a a student, it helps just as much if not more as my future students will have. I can create my network of teacher resources and helpful pages to my studies and my life. And, instead of possibly forgetting what they are or having to email them to myself, I can simply bookmark them, tag them and access at any time through Diigo. Whether I am looking for sample quizzes, lesson plan help or cool historical videos to show in a future class, my Social Bookmarks lead the way. The Diigo toolbar makes it even easier to bookmark pages and I plan on using it alot.
In my own classroom, I believe they have a lot of benefit. Social bookmarks can be seen by my students as they have the ability to check out pages that I have linked on there and also access a wide variety of resources that are relevant to our class. They may be cool facts, homework helpers or even just a nice supplement to the day's material that I can choose to assign for homework. I think Social Bookmarking is an awesome tool that can help my students to be informed about the class and also parents can check out my bookmarks and maybe understand what their children are learning about. I have the wealth of the World Wide Web to add to my Diigo page and allow my students to grow in and out of the classroom. When we do work in the lab rather than writing out a whole web page on the board, I can save time and keep my students attention by having them just simply connect to my Diigo page from the class website.
For me now as a a student, it helps just as much if not more as my future students will have. I can create my network of teacher resources and helpful pages to my studies and my life. And, instead of possibly forgetting what they are or having to email them to myself, I can simply bookmark them, tag them and access at any time through Diigo. Whether I am looking for sample quizzes, lesson plan help or cool historical videos to show in a future class, my Social Bookmarks lead the way. The Diigo toolbar makes it even easier to bookmark pages and I plan on using it alot.
Monday, September 12, 2011
The inaugural post of Sean A. Snyder: It's a blog world after all...
Blogs are all around us these days on the internet. So, why not bring them into the classroom. In my classroom, I believe that blog post will very useful for both myself and my students. In terms of any historical documents that we read, my students can use blog posts to respond to discussion questions or give their overall reaction of the material. I also think it will be helpful to use the posts to get feedback from students and cut down on the amount of paper distributed in class. In high school, I know many teachers like to submit pre-surveys to both learn about the students and post surveys to see what the students though of class. I think it would be fun for the students to be able to look at their responses throughout the semester and see what they like or do not like about class. Additionally, it would give me the opportunity as the teacher to make sure my students are enjoying themselves.
The advantages to using blogs in the classroom are that a teacher has the opportunity to periodically check on student's work that is posted on the blog and can also have a forum to post questions up there. Some disadvantages to using blogs in the classroom are they hard to control what students actually post and maybe the students will use the technology incorrectly and not ask for help. Like any other technology, blogs need to be regulated and the teacher has to carefully select how he/she wants to utilize them.
Google Apps are great in my opinion. The fact that you can share a document, spreadsheet or powerpoint presentation with anyone else and also see the changes that a person makes is great. The functionality and level of innovation is not as great as the traditional apps but they are pretty cool and helpful. They make it even easier for a teacher to check students work and provide comments and a gmail account is very easy to set up. Here's some advantages and disadvantages to using them over traditional apps.
Advantages:
1. no downloads, just open a file
2. the file can be saved as anything and downloaded to Word, Powerpoint or Excel
3. sharing between pupil and teacher to get feedback right now
4. convenient, all you need is a google account
5. great option for group projects
Disadvantages
1. not as much functionality
2. features are limited
3. can be confusing sometimes
4. not everyone has a google account
The advantages to using blogs in the classroom are that a teacher has the opportunity to periodically check on student's work that is posted on the blog and can also have a forum to post questions up there. Some disadvantages to using blogs in the classroom are they hard to control what students actually post and maybe the students will use the technology incorrectly and not ask for help. Like any other technology, blogs need to be regulated and the teacher has to carefully select how he/she wants to utilize them.
Google Apps are great in my opinion. The fact that you can share a document, spreadsheet or powerpoint presentation with anyone else and also see the changes that a person makes is great. The functionality and level of innovation is not as great as the traditional apps but they are pretty cool and helpful. They make it even easier for a teacher to check students work and provide comments and a gmail account is very easy to set up. Here's some advantages and disadvantages to using them over traditional apps.
Advantages:
1. no downloads, just open a file
2. the file can be saved as anything and downloaded to Word, Powerpoint or Excel
3. sharing between pupil and teacher to get feedback right now
4. convenient, all you need is a google account
5. great option for group projects
Disadvantages
1. not as much functionality
2. features are limited
3. can be confusing sometimes
4. not everyone has a google account
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