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"Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another." -- Marva Collins

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Educational I pad App Review

When it comes to young children it is hard to get them to pay attention to anything for any period of time.  It has to be extra ordinary in order to keep the attention of the child for more than twenty minutes.  This makes things hard when trying to introduce math to a child at the first and second grade level.    Using this I pad app, it captures the attention of any child who plays it. 

There is another I pad app exactly like this one that is better geared towards boys using dinosaurs. 

The wonderful thing about these apps is that their bright colors and happy pictures entertain the children while they learn. 
There are only three simple rules:   1. Visually solve the math problem, 2. Touch the correct star to answer the problem, and 3. Complete each level to unlock special prizes. 
This is a great app to return to as the child’s math skills improve.  The game moves from adding to subtracting and then having a combination of the two. 


This amazing app captures your child’s attention so you know they are not getting into any trouble while you are trying to get your own errands done, while the child is learning and having fun.  What more could any parent ask for.   
Price:  FREE
Rating :5/5

References:
Counts, B. (2010). Ace kids math games hd free lite - for ipad. ITunes Preview, Retrieved from http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ace-kids-math-games-hd-free/id367798719?mt=8

Counts, B. (2010). Dinosaurs kids math hd free lite - for ipad. ITunes Preview, Retrieved from http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dinosaurs-kids-math-hd-free/id368406942?mt=8

 

Monday, November 14, 2011

My role is the Altitudinist.

   
Your Impressions
WebQuest
Strengths
Weaknesses
Grow School Greens

 Great for research, gets kids involved and excited.


 Takes too long to see results. Young ones may lose interest.

Where is My Hero?

Gets kids to research history and get information from real life people.   


 It limits their creativity.

Underground Railroad

 Good to apply knowledge of slaves and slave holders. 


 Too many process, may take too long. 

Ice Cream

 Great for creativity.  Allows them to think outside the box. 


May get messy if you feed them some ice cream.  And you must feed them ice cream after that.

Ancient Egypt
  Good for learning about new cultures.   

 Seems hard to follow.

 
 
The best webquest would have to be Grow school greens.  It forces the child to be responsible for something.  The webquest has them do research, but then put that research to work.   In the Process it provides individual jobs to be done at the same time promoting teamwork.  This allows room for higher level thinking and help when they get stuck.  At the end of this project they can see all their hard work pay off in the form of produce. 

I feel another good webquest is We all Scream for Ice cream.  This webquest allows children to be creative in the flavors they create and the label they produce for their ice cream product.  It is a great way to mix fun with learning.  This webquests offers the opportunity to analyze how to make ice cream and adding your own fun with your own flavors.  The Advertising allows the children to work as a group and analyze how the best way to get their ice cream flavor out there. This provides additional work for advertisement research.  

I feel the worst is the Ancient Egyptian WebQuest.  I feel the layout of the webquest made it hard to stay on track.  It does encourage them to learn about a new culture, however, there is nothing about individual and group work.  Not forcing children to have their own role in the project allows room for one student being stuck doing all the work.   The eliminates the higher learning for any of the other students.

I feel the worst is also the Unraveling the Underground Railroad.  This webquest allows individual work but the positions that the child holds forces some to be the controller and some the controlled.  This project may be good for bullies to show them how it feels, but it seems like it could cause a negative light on a child.  It is a great idea to teach the children of the underground railroad, but having them act out may go too far.  It doesn’t really offer much analyze of information.  It also hinders their creativity because the only thing they are doing is creating journals after the research.  It does encourage them to synthesize multiple perspectives, I just feel it is not as good as the others. 

The best: are the best because they allow both teamwork and individual work with analyzation of research that is being put to work using your hands to allow the students to remember longer.  These also provide the students with a chance to be creative from growing plants to creating a new ice cream flavor.  These provide a little of analyzing information with synthesizing multiple perspectives at the same time allowing them to use creativity.

The worst: to me are the ones that didn’t provide a little of each point.  These would either provide multiple perspectives but not allow them to be creative.  Or has them analyze work but doesn’t allow them to see different perspectives.   

Storybird

Teacher's First Year by ssuesli2201 on Storybird

Friday, November 11, 2011

Double Journal 12

Summery
            Sex offenders should not be banned from social networks because not all sex offenders actually committed a sexual crime.  Some sex offenders were placed on the list for random things such as: urinating in public, public nudity or streaking, some sex offenders were teenagers who had consensual sex with other teenagers.  This article is a persuasive article to get others to see that not all sex offenders should be punished from social networks because of some sex offenders who actually had sex with underage children.  They also make the argument that it is in our best interest to allow them on social networks to keep track of what they are doing to keep others safe. 
Evidence:
            The fact that some of the sex offenders were placed on the sex offender registry when there was no sexual encounter in the situation is one piece of evidence.  It would be in our interest to allow them to be on social networks to keep track of them.  Also, there were only a very small few cases where the internet was used to form a relationship. 
Validate the Website:
            The domain name makes it a commercial site.  It is a news website.  The author is clearly stated and when the article was written is also clearly stated.  There is short information listing of the author stating what he has done recently and why he is interested in this information.  There are advertisements to make the site proof that it is a commercial site.  The information in the article can be validated using other internet sites.  Also using the links in the article, one downfall of the article is a link goes to more work of the original author however another link gives validation of some of the points made in the article. 
My Position:
            At first I felt that sex offenders have no business on a social networking site.  I looked at it as allowing a sex offending in an elementary classroom; it just doesn’t work well to do so.  However, when I learned that not all sex offenders where in a situation of sexual encounter that some sex offenders are on the list for crimes like urinating in public or public nudity they should be able to be on social networking sites.  First we should allow all sex offenders to be on social networking sites to keep track of where they are and what they are into.  Second we should rethink the sex offender list because if we really have sex offenders who only urinated in public then we have bigger problems with the rights of people then social networking.  I am not saying the public urinaters should go without punishment, but do they really need placed on the sex offenders list? 

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

5 W's and 1 H of cyberspace

California's Velcro Crop under Challenge (1993)

Who
·         Yes Ken Umback
·         No
·         Yes
·         No
·         No
·         No
What
·         No
·         No
·         Yes
·         No
·         Yes
·         No
·         No
·         No
·         No
·         No
When
·         Yes
·         Yes
·         Yes
Where
·         . com
Why
·         Yes
·         No
·         No
How