Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Social Networking Privacy Policies

Nowadays there are many worries about the privacy of social networking sites. Some policies are great for users others can be deceiving.  Here are two policies on facebook that I found interesting.

"Review tags friends add to your facebook"

 I thought this was useful because it can filter photos or posts you do not want on your facebook. Even if you do not log onto facebook all the time, giving people time to see something you do not want posted, you have to approve the tag first. This is a great policy. So let's say you someone posts an incriminating picture of you. Instead of your tag automatically being published, when you log on you must approve the tag before it becomes public.


When blocking someone this is what facebook says:


"Once you block someone, that person can no longer be your friend on Facebook or interact with you (except within apps and games you both use and groups you are both a member of)."

It is very useful to be able to block someone, especially if they are harassing you or causing problems. What suprised me thought was the fact that the blocked person can still interact with you on facebook through apps. I think that it is a good thing though that facebook allows users to block one another. This can prevent a lot of problems. 

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Educational Games

Educational games are a great way to get students interested and engaged in the activities. Math basketball is is a higher math game on FunBrain. Link here:
http://www.funbrain.com/brain/MathBrain/Games/GameOpaque.html?GameName=MathBasketball3&GameName=MathBasketball2&GameName=MathBasketball&Brain=math&Grade=5&Language=en_us&GameNumber=4&Color=FFCC33&HardCoded=false&ReturnTo=kidscenter 

Depending on what grade level you chose, it gives you different level math problems any where from simple addition to double digit multiplication or division. The games progresses as it goes on so it gives reason and motivation to keep playing. Each problem you solve either passes the basketball to someone, dribbles around an opponent or shoots the ball. Once you score a basket you win. It is also great because you have an actual character you are playing as and it increasingly gets harder.
FunBrain is also a great website because you can play a board game where on each move you must play an educational game. Sometimes it also throws in some non education games for variation. You must beat each game to continue on in the board game. This is a great way to get students involved using educational math games. 
CHECK IT OUT.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Technological Lesson Plans

The lessons involving technology that we did the last two weeks were very interesting to see. They were both unique. They both used technology yet they were both so different. These lessons definitely helped me see what would be best to use in my lesson plan and what would not work in my lesson plan. It was really interesting to see different ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. In the first one we used a "make your own hurricane" simulator, where we had to play around with the different atmospheric variables until it was just right for a hurricane. It was fun and I could see students getting really involved. The second lesson plan we read a poem about aliens and then went on Paint on the computers and drew out the poems how we saw them. It was really cool to see how everyone perceived the poem differently. 


Technology can be used in the classroom in many different ways and it was really interesting to see how each group incorporated it. It definitely helped me reflect on my future teaching and how I will try to incorporate technology into the classroom.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Technology!


I read an article titled, "3 Tips on Integrating Technology in the Classroom"

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2012/01/25/3-tips-on-integrating-technology-in-the-classroom

It was a very intriguing article. It talks about how to integrate technology into the classroom instead of just handing students technology and saying, "here you go!". It mentions celebrating " good teaching, especially the kind that involves working with evolving technologies, sometimes requires good advice". The three main steps in the article were: 

1) Planning ahead
 It is important to plan ahead such as teachers need to be involved when a school wants to add more technology into the classroom. Also, when you use technology in the classroom you, as a teacher, want to make sure the technology will function correctly and make sure you have a plan B just in case technology fails. 

2)Try something new
 Teachers should try new technological resources in their classroom. The article also mentions recording lectures for students to watch at home. When the students come into class, they can work on projects and assignments therefor the teacher is also more engaged with the students.

3)Become an educational designer
Teachers need to adapt with the technology. Also, teachers can monitor what content is there for their students to access in their technology. Teachers can even design technology to assist them with lesson.

I found this article very helpful. It had many points that I had never thought of before, such as having students listen to the lectures at home.