Discovery in Our Quest of Knowledge

"Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge."

~ Stephen Hawking

While searching for the perfect webquest for use in my future classroom I viewed many webquests that had wonderful content but lacked the personal style I was hoping to include in my classroom.  Finally I found a webquest that fit not only my subject area, but my own personal teaching style.  I would be very willing to use the "Exploring Our Solar System" webquest that was created by Mrs. Laurel Anderson and located at http://users.zoominternet.net/~eanderson/webquest/index.html.  The first thing that caught my attention was the backdrop and images.  Once I started reading into the first page and saw the use of this teachers language I was very pleased with my find.  The transition to the next page was wonderful "Blastoff!!!" with that word having a link to the following page.  I prefer the multiple page structure for webquests over the original single page structure.  This webquest provides a fun oriented structure and even gives the students roles in scientifically "fun" terms.  Also I enjoyed that this webquest provided options for the students to pick which project they would want to use to present their findings.  I did find one or two dead links but the important ones still worked.  I would have loved to of seen the evaluation page include a link at the end of the sentence for the conclusion page.  I think the conclusion page was worded in an attractive style that allowed the students to still have fun while winding down the task.  

The Amazingly Useful Teacher Blogs

While I was searching for helpful teacher blogs for resources I happened to come across http://www.sciencefix.com/.  I really enjoyed how this teachers blog addresses not only the use of technology in the classroom but the fact of misconceptions in science.  One of the videos provided shows a science teacher interviewing a few non-science teacher volunteers on the subject of "what is mass".  I think this truly allows students to see that it is not only students that may have trouble learning about a certain item such as mass.  In my opinion students will be less afraid to ask for help or clarity on subject matter if they can see that others can have similar issues with retaining or understanding information.  Another great idea this teachers blog has pointed out for me is how they used google my maps to demonstrate the distance between all of the planets.  It is true that students may have a hard time understanding the vast distance without having something familiar for comparison.  Another individual posted a comment on this blog for another resource that I may have never came across if not for this blog.  The video they posted helps students understand the actual size of an atom which can be useful for some teachers to use in their classroom.

So in a nutshell if you are a teacher using the blog technology it can be a wonderful resource for not only your students and yourself but for other teachers and their students.  One thing I would be sure to do when blogging is to include links or provide the information for any outside sources that are not your original soul idea.  I know I have a lot of classroom ideas that I have came up with that I would not mind sharing with others so those items would be straight from the horses mouth and no links required to the original source.

Reflection on Website Evaluation

I would have to say that after spending some time evaluating the NASA website I found this task to be a little difficult but useful.  I think every teacher and student should learn how to view websites in order to determine the accuracy of the information provided.  One thing I found on the NASA site was that every page did not have a date of when it was last updated.  Most pages did have the dates listed but for the most part the main home page did not include a date for update status.  I am guessing this is because the information boxes probably update automatically every day.  This activity was pretty helpful in getting you to think about what is important for the websites that we may have never thought about before this evaluation.  One thing most people do not think about is images having the alt tags for individuals that need to use screen readers.  I did search and found written text saying that in 2001 they were requiring every image to have an alt tag but since I do not have screen reader software on my computer I was unable to test this site in order to verify that fact.  Many people do not realize that some students that are deaf and hard of hearing also suffer with vision loss.  These students, such as those with usher syndrome, could benefit from alt tags being used on websites.

TPTE Great Expectations

I my not be the best computer oriented person around campus, but I have started learning many new tasks associated with technology lately.  I hope that I can learn more information during this semester by taking the TPTE course since my first introduction to blogging occurred during last semesters EdPsych class.  I have never used wiki's before this class but I have read some general wiki's online.  I would love to discover additional technologies that I can use in my future classroom to help my students absorb content.