ed class

I never realized how many search engines there are out there!

I have always used google or yahoo and occasionally ask jeves, but the rest of these are a whole new thing to me. It is weird that there are so many, I kind of do not see the point. Some are so unreliable, and who is to say the information you find is true. For example, I use wikopedia to look up random things I want to know, but it can be edited by anyone-so who is to say it is truthful information?

Also in class, some people found some very inappropriate things on the web while looking in search engines! It is all so strange to me as to why they are there?

How do we know as teachers which is the best engine to direct our students too? And why do you think there are so many of them?

Today we learned about clickers. The presentation was very well done and I liked that the whole class got involved. I am not too sure how I feel about them though.

I have used clickers before in my study and although it may sound imature I found myself always wanting to push the buttons just to see what would happen-while this sounds childish-if you give these things to a group of middle schoolers, I gaurentee they would do the same thing!

I like the idea of saving paper and doing things on the bored and it is good that it will save the teacher time on grading, but part of me thinks that is part of being a teacher. I fear teachers will become too lazy and chose to use these for all testing rather than just when needed. I fear grades will go from essays and short answers where the kids have to think about what they are doing into all multiple choice so it is easier on the teacher.

Also what if two classrooms side by side are using the clickers-could the machines get confused and pick up mixed signals?

What if someone wants to go back and change there answer?

I think they sound good in theory but they just seem slightly lazy to me. I don’t know if I would be a fan-and from what the boys said it seems like a hastle to get it all set up.

It is cool though to do group things and get to know everyone activities with.

I really liked the lesson on ipod’s and mp3s. I have an ipod that I recently got but I know NOTHING about them. On my flight over from America I discovered mine has games (some pretty fun ones) and other things like calculator and timers. I use my ipod when I am riding my bike and I use it with the Nike Plus kit. Otherwise I am not to big into it.

I thought it was a cool idea of making a quiz on there though. One of the games that comes with my ipod is a quiz on movies and tv shows-and I see how they could be good for kids to do in their spare time. However, I still believe ipods are way to expensive to be given out and although kids can use them for testing, loading the different quizes and erasing the data could be quiet a hassle. I have had my ipod (not that I’m a computer whiz) but since I got it about a year ago I have not added or deleted music, because I honestly don’t know how. I could see kids getting frustrarted and using this expensive item more as a toy that a learning tool.

Does anyone agree-disagree?

this past week we heard all about podcasting-and even got to make our own garage band music.

It was interesting to me because I have never used podcasting or thought of it ourside of the show One Tree Hill-where he podcast the local high school basketball games. I still am not familiar with it-and I do not know if I would use it in a classroom. But it is an interesting thing that is quickly becoming more and more popular.

Does anyone use pod casting regularly for anything?