Morgan+Riley

1201109494

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Future Education
Middle School Science 5th Grade

Information
My name is Morgan Riley, I am a junior at KU. I am in the school of education program working on my degree in middle education with a focus in science. I am very excited to become more educated in technology so I can make my teaching more affective as a future teacher. When it comes to my technology level, I am very basic. I believe that technology is one of the most important tools in education so I am happy to be taking this class. Anyone can contact me by email, morgie87@ku.edu. = = =Assignments=

Web Exemplars
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.137 I would suggest this website for students to use if studying Christopher Columbus because it has a lot of information on the page as soon as you click on the site, it has many useful links that are easy to see and understand, the site is eye catching, and the site is easy to navigate. I used google to research this subject and as soon as I found this site, I explored it more because it was very easy to understand for students at the middle school age level.

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/c-Columbus/columbus.html I would not suggest going to this site to my students because it is not eye catching at all, most students would exit out of the site because it does not catch your attention. There also are no links to other sites, there are no useful pictures, and there are only a few paragraphs of information. This website looks like a word document that was cut and pasted.

1/25/08 Web Exemplars Morgan Riley
One feature that I found to be very important when choosing a website is that it should be eye-catching. When I was looking for a good website on Christopher Columbus, I immediately closed out of the sites that were dull and boring to me. I didn’t even read the information on the site. I figure that if I as a teacher would do this, so would all of my students no matter what age. Although websites should be eye-catching, having too many colors, graphics, and links (etc.) is also a bad feature to have on a website because it can look obnoxious and confusing to many students because there is too much to look at on the page. Another feature important to have on a website is good organization. The website I chose had very good and easy to understand links and the organization on the page was easy to follow and the information was readable to students at the middle school level. I also found that sites that had links to activities such as games and quizzes were useful to not only the students, but for teachers as well. I agree with Lindsey J. when she said that the sites should be age appropriate. As a teacher, you need to make sure that your students are able to read and understand the site or if the site is too juvenile for older students that are in high school.



3/11/08 Wiki Site
http://prtscienceriley.wikispaces.com/

4/18/08 Communities
The two programs I chose that could be incorperated into my wiki site would be Youtube and Facebook. The reason I chose Youtube is because it is a great tool that can be used to find many visual demonstrations. In science classes, students will be doing many projects, experiments, and will have to know various concepts that could be better explained through a demonstration. In my wiki site, the standard and benchmarks I chose have to deal with astronomy. To help my students understand the universe and how big our planet is compared to other planets, they could watch a Youtube video that visually explains these concepts. An example would be this Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEKXCfB9fds&feature=related. This video helps explain the size of the planets compared to the sun and other stars. I think Youtube is a great tool for especially science classes because science is always understood best when it is explained visually. The reason I chose facebook was because as a future science teacher, I will be assigning a lot of group projects and activites. Students will have to work together outside of class and since I would not allow my wiki site to be a social tool, Facebook is a great way for the students to communicate with each other outside of class.

4/20/08 Media
The reason I chose to do a powerpoint on comparing the planet sizes was because it is a very easy and effective way of getting students to understand concepts especially for this subject. Just by showing a few pictures of objects seen every day and comparing them to the actual sizes of planets on a powerpoint is affective and easy because students can access it easily on the wiki site and perhaps print the information off as a reference. If I were to make a iMovie over this subject, it would be just as affective but a bit harder for students to access the information. I think if I were to make an iMovie, students may find it more interesting and would be more intrigued by watching a film rather than a powerpoint but the use of a powerpoint in this case makes more sence to use.