Week 8 5 E Lesson Plan and Group Project

This week was a group work week. This week the group worked on constructivism. Constructivism is the theory that the teacher will guide the students through learning instead of directing them. Many times teachers are just the vessel for passing and telling students information. In this model students are passive learners. In the constructivism model, students are active learners. The students are provided with activities that enhance their learning making them actively think and use new information. This helps the students to get a better understanding of the material and how it cold be used in the real world. In our group my job was to a 5 E lesson plan. The 5 E lesson plan is  a constructive science lesson plan. I picked a lesson on how viruses would spread. In the lesson students will simulate how one infected individual can pass on the infection to other in the class by sharing a drink. Student will observe how infections can quickly spread among populations.  I also have to create a few popwerpoint slides for our groups presentation. My slides will be on the lesson plan just giving the class a brief outline of what the lesson is about. Overall the group worked well again in preforming the tasks of the webquest.

Making a PowerPoint

When we were asked to make a PowerPoint in our group, I thought how easy, I use PowerPoint almost everyday in my classroom. We used Google docs to upload our PowerPoint so that each member could work on their part. When doing this however I found that there are some limitations to the Google docs presentation software. The software only allows you to up load Microsoft PowerPoint slides that are saved in the 2003 version. This would not be an issue except it prevents some animations from being used. When I present in my classroom, I find that having animations is very eye catching for students and people in general. So with out the extras PowerPoint can become plain. So in the future I hope that google docs up dates their software so that animations can be used. Other then that one catch, having everyone work on the presentation in that one spot was very time efficient and helpful.

The Internet and ME

In my class on of the assignments was to make a digital footprint of myself. Before I started this assignment I wondered what  I would find about my self just out their on the internet. When I searched my self I found that there is a lot out there about me. All the articles that are out there are about me playing sports. Most of the recent articles are about my college baseball career. I was able to find some articles about me from the Mount on how I was a part time teacher and player at the college last year.There are some articles that are still floating around there about my high school football team from 7 years ago. Toward the bottom of the page they had information about my family (mother, Father, and brother)It was good to find that there are only good things about me on the internet so far which is good if a future employer was to ever look me up.

Week 4 Google Tools

This week I found out how easy it is o work in a group on a single document with out have to keep re-saving a new file or uploading a new document. By using Gmail there are many options right in the gmail that allow to to view, download, and work on different types of files, jpegs, videos. This week in our group we started to work on our teacher toolkit. Each person in our group took their own area of study to make a tool kit.  Since I am a science teacher I took the science part of our kit. I found about ten different websites that allows teachers to find information quickly on worksheet, lesson plans, and lab activities. In less then a week our group finished our teacher toolkit. We used the same name as our teacher page automation foundation. Each section was divided up into MAth, Science, English, and History. All the links on the page work and the design of the page matches the design of our regular homepage for automation foundation. One step that our group had to do was create an email address that everyone could use so that we could all access the teacher toolkit. So we came up with  automationfondation@gmail.com. Now anyone in the group can make changes to the toolkit in the future. This week took a  very strong collaborative effort by all the member of our group and each one of us did an excellent job.

Internet Safety

While doing the internet safety assignment I learned a few different things. One main thing was that SPAM email acts as a blocker of bandwidth. I used to think of SPAM as just an annoyance but it can actually cause slowing of your system. CAUCE is a group that is trying to get laws passed to prevent SPAM or at least reduce the amount of SPAM that can be sent by large companies. Most of the time however the large companies can afford to prevent legislation against their SPAM so no meaningful laws are passed or enforced. Also when surfing the web you should check on the right to see if the site is approved by the search engine so you do not access any sites that can infect your computer. When chatting with others people should be careful not to give out personal information or to use their real name when entering a chat room.  The internet is a wonderful tool to use but there are things on the internet that you have to be aware of and careful of. When using the computer just think before you give out personal information, download a file, or enter a certain website.