"Talk" With Me - WebQuest

It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to find a WebQuest that related to the Deaf Education field. The project that I thought was best, was "Talk" With Me. This WebQuest is geared towards deaf students and making a "welcome packet" for hearing students that have never used sign before. This not only helps to teach my students about the history of the Deaf culture but equips them with communication tools they need when interacting with hearing people! 

This project has the students working in groups to create a pamphlet or power point that has information about being deaf, about sign language and a copy of the manual alphabet. This site has many links and pictures (all the links work). Some of the links go to worksheets that the students print off and fill out so as they research they have all the information at the end to make the project. The second part of the project is for them to teach some signs to this "new hearing classroom." With this they have the option to create a video or a book with the signs they would teach. This is a great use of technology because all the links work and the students are using the internet to look up information. They are using a video camera to record their words, as well as power point to make a project. This project has them work in groups so they are using team work. They have to pick out the most important aspects and signs to share so this uses higher order thinking. This activity is a good use of time because they are learning what is important and not spending tons of time on the project. 


This went well on finding a WebQuest, but I had to use the "garden" search on the website because the word search is down. That took me more time than I wished to find something that is in my field. As a teacher I would have made sure that the links all worked when I told the class to use the search so that I wouldn't have them wasting time looking around. This was one of the first few that I found so it was not hard after I got to that point. 


I had never heard of WebQuest before so this activity introduced me to a new site that I can use. I think that this is very helpful because all the lessons are made, even if you do not like one you can change it so that it fits your classroom better. This can help with planning and new ideas to keep the classroom fun! 


I think that I am going to use this in my classroom even if it is not exactly what the lesson online says. I can use it to get my ideas and find a great activity that promotes higher order thinking, technology use, group work and is worth their time! 

Oh So Delicious!

I got assigned delicious for my wiki project. I had never heard of delicious before this assignment and at first I wasn't looking forward to working with this one. Once I started to explore and saw that it was a social bookmarking website I started to use it for all my personal websites. I have had that problem where my old computer died and I had all of my pages saved in the bookmarks on that computer and had to go and track down all the sites again. If I had a delicious account I wouldn't have had to do that! 

I think this site was very easy to use and nothing went wrong when I was learning how to use this. I went in and already had a yahoo account and then started to add the URL's for all of my favorite sites. 


This is super easy to use and I am going to set up another one for my classroom so that I can share things and they do not have access to things like my facebook or other social sites that I have linked on my personal delicious account. I really like the feature for sharing all my links with friends and I can click on their names and see everything that they have in their bookmarks. 


The tags are an interesting part of this website because all of my peers are tagging what they think a website is to them and I can go through and look for other great sites to use in my classroom based on those tags. I really like the popular list that shows all the favorites at that time. It would let me see sites that I would have never been introduced to. 


In my classroom I would give all the students and even maybe parents (depending on how much I want them involved) the link to my classroom delicious page. This way all the information that I want them to see and different websites that I want them to look at will be there. They can link to them from any computer as long as they have my URL name to my delicious page. I can make a classroom website and add it to my delicious and it can have the assignments and different contact information and anything else I want them to have. 


I can also have the students create their own delicious pages and all link to each other this way we can see everyone's websites that they recommend or want to share with us. I will have to be careful with this to make sure that the students do not link a nasty website or something offensive. This is where I would have to have a lesson on etiquette on what they should and shouldn't do on this site. 


I think this is a great website and I am going to start to tell my friends about it so that we can all network and see the websites we all look at. 

Glogster.edu

The web 2.0 tool that really caught my eye was the Gloster. I love being creative and I want to be able to use that in my classroom. I know from working with the students at Tennessee School for the Deaf that they love using technology and being able to post my different sites, including the one that I worked on for a web 2.0 tool (Delicious) and having it all there for them to access from one point would be really convenient. 

Have a look at my Gloster!

This was actually very easy to use once I got the hang of it. I wish that someone had told me that you have to just delete the original items the have on the page cannot be changed so just delete them and add new ones. I must have spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to write my name in front of classroom. After I got that all cleared I went through all the different backgrounds and there were so many fun ones but I tried to stick more to an educational looking background that wouldn't be super distracting to children. 

Adding links was very easy! I had all the web sites and clicked on the link button and then bam! they were all connected! I really like when you are looking at the glog after and it puts a pink circle around the "post it" where there is a link! This way everyone knows if you click on it, it will take it to the site. 

I learned all about this site, I had no idea that this existed before this web 2.0 task. I am glad that I got introduced to all these different tools and I have gotten some great new ideas to bring technology into my classroom. I learned that this is an easy task and you get a great looking clean result. I am a very organized person and would rather have this all on the computer then print out and have pages everywhere. This way I also know all the students will have the information that they needed and they cannot use the excuse 'I lost it' or 'I didn't know'. 

Next time I think that I will maybe get a little more creative and add pictures or more links to different sites that I am using in the classroom. I would even try to theme it to my classroom or the seasons or something that we are doing in class during that time. This way the kids are still interested and they want to look at the different changes I made. I may even add some fun links to it like a game site (educational of course) Maybe add one of those sites that they can make a crossword or puzzle with their spelling words and then give it to another classmate. 

I can also give this website to parents so they can check on what assignments are due, some tips for helping with homework or other useful sites for the parents. I can include my contact information on here too so that the parents have everything they need if there is a question. 

Overall I think this was fun to be introduced to a new site that can help me organize and get information out to my students, parents and even some other teachers! 

Exploration of The Exploratorium

I have been working in a third, fourth and fifth grade science class at Tennessee School for the Deaf this semester. This made me want to look at a web site that has to do with science. I fell in LOVE with The Exploratorium. It is FANTASTIC! There is so much information all packed into one website, they have different categories and within those categories there are different activities. 

This is a shot of some of the different activities the students can use in the "Human Body" section. Aren't the pictures FANTASTIC!! They just make you want to explore :)

This is one of the sections in 'Everyday Science.' It is so colorful and interactive! In this you can click on a flower and it will pull it up so you can see it close. There is also a part that you can see the different parts.  

I knew that there were such things and appropriate web sites and inappropriate ones but I never realized how many different criteria there are. I think overall this activity went very well, it was upfront with what was wanted but there was still some need for clarifications. I don't think there was anything that didn't 'go well' maybe if there was more time to do this in class or if we were told before hand to look at the websites or have a few in mind. Though I wouldn't have the one that I picked then because it was recommended to me in class so there are ups and downs. I don't think that I would do anything different next time with this activity, I went through all the questions and was playing with the website as I was filling them in. 

With using this in my classroom I don't know how much time I will have to go through every website that we use but I will keep all these things in mind to look for the authors and well known sources and make sure there is no bias. I know that I will use this website 100% in my classroom if I am teaching science and if I am not I will let the science teacher know about this website. I think this activity reenforced information we have been taught about using websites since we have been using internet in school! It went deeper into the things that we need to look for. I have heard horror stories from other teachers talking about how they were using Google Images and then something nasty came up on the screen and they panic and couldn't get it down fast enough. I know to always look at a site before you pull it up in front of the class but took it to a new level. I think its important to look at the websites so you know that you are giving the students the right information. This activity helped to show me what to look for. 

Wiki WHAT?!

This was my first time every creating a wiki, I can remember working at summer camp a few years ago and someone was talking about how they made a wiki page on themselves (to make themselves famous) and it got deleted because they were not really famous. I had never had a need to make one. I think that it was very easy to do. I went thought all the different websites that the teacher listed because this was something new to me. I think that overall it was very self explanatory; you made your page and wrote about yourself.



I had a few problems with my picture because I tried to put that in last and it didn’t want to move to where I wanted it. I ended up cutting all the information that I typed and put the picture in first and then added my words and shaped them around the picture. Other than that I was able to play with the fonts (which I wish they had a few more-but I understand not having as many because they would be too hard to read) and playing with the colors.


This whole experience was something new to me so I learned everything from how to sign up to one and then how to make my page and help edit others. I think that next time I will start with my picture first and then put in the words. I would love to try adding more than one picture and see how the spacing works and if I have to use them on one side or if I can put them in the middle and write around them.


I think that using this in my classroom will be interesting. I was in the classroom today at Tennessee School for the Deaf and we were working on learning parts of the body. The teacher had made a power point on the smart board and they were going through all the slides. I was thinking that we could have had the students come up and find the vocabulary words in Google images (but I would go through all the words first to make sure nothing nasty will come up on the board!) We could use this to paste onto the classroom wiki and then make links to other pages so as we learned about new parts of the body we can move through the pages. When we have pictures the kids and each write the labels for the item and a sentence about what they learned to practice English. Then we can share this with another grade or other teachers to showcase all our work. The kids love using the internet and computers and this is a way that we can incorporate learning into the computers. Some of the students that I would work with need more help so maybe I can pair them with a higher achieving student and monitor to make sure they are both sharing the work and getting what they need to succeed.


I think this was an interesting experience because I would have never used this if I wasn’t in the class and I would have never thought about the different ways I can incorporate this into my classrooms.