Social Bookmarking Project

http://www.diigo.com/list/bch102/educational-resources&v=p

Teacher stress

While looking for websites for my socialbookmarking project I came across a disturbing website. Apparently, teaching is the fourth most stressful profession and one third of new teachers will leave the profession within five years, and 44% of all long term disability claims by teachers are stress related. I also did not know about some side effects that stress can have on the mind and body. Damaging effects of stress: Stress damages the brain and can impair memory function, raises blood pressure, can trigger pain, gas, and aggravate stomach ulcers, and can stimulate the production of inflammatory hormones which contribute to the build-up of plaque in the arteries. This website offers a teacher survival kit with lots of humorous cartoons. It is a fact that laughter can actually lower blood pressure and cut stress levels in half. If you want to check out this website the URL is http://www.motivationalplus.com/Cartoonsforteachers.html

Power Point

I enjoyed putting together my power point project. Before this class I was never formally taught how to use all the tools properly for a creative presentation, it was usually just short sentences with a colorful background. But I'm glad I know how to draw shapes and customize action features and create buttons and hyperlinks. It makes the presentation that much more interesting and easier to get students involved.

Let Children Play

I thought the "Let Children Play" video brought up a very good point. Not only do children need to play to increase their social and intellectual thinking, but with child obesity becoming a growing problem in the country, I think it's important to keep recess as a way for children to have physical activity everyday. Some students do not participate in sports outside of school so this might be the only time in the day that they can participate in a physical activity and play with friends. Even if the school does not have a playground available, students can use the school's gymnasium or have indoor recess in their classroom and play board games or arts and crafts.

Is Geography Being Left Out of the Curriculum?

After completing my you tube project, I came to notice that a majority of people are not familiar with world geography. I'm not going to go into detail, but the results were very poor. Most of the people that were interviewed stated that they never had to take a geography course in school. Others said that the only geography class they took was in 7th or 8th grade and it was only local geography. I think geography should be a mandatory class in high school and in college no matter what your major is. How can you travel somewhere and not know where you're going? How can you study a country in a history class and not know where it is? The state is talking about putting social studies on the PSSA's, but how good will the scores be if the basics are not being taught?

Webpage

I started out using weebly for my webpage and I didn't like it at all. I thought it was very restrictive. They had a lot of templates to choose from, but you couldn' t move anything around or customize it how you wanted to. I switched to webnode and I love it. It was so easy to create a webpage with this site and I could add so many different things to it. I added polls and forums, links to other webpages and you tube videos, photos and clip art. Everything you needed was right in the toolbar and you just dragged it and placed it where you wanted it.

http://missherrswebpage.webnode.com/

Inspiration

I love the inspiration program. I used it a few days ago when I was working on my concept map and it didn't take me long at all. It was so easy to set up and modify. I'm normally not great at creating things like this and I thought it was going to take a long time, but it didn't. I picked a template that I liked, I added pictures and more bubbles to it, and moved it around to organize it better. This was the first project that I've done on a computer that didn't frustrate me. It was so easy. I wish I would have known about this program before I had to make my unit plan for my secondary methods course.

Wordle

I liked the wordle website that we played around with as a class. I think students would really like to use it because it's kind of like an art project and I thought of some ways to incorporate it into a lesson. You can use this as a before and after comparison of a lesson. For example, if you're teaching geography, you can have the students use wordle and type in as many countries they can think of before you teach the unit. After the unit is over, the students can do the same thing again, and compare how many more countries they now know from before the lesson. It's a great way for them to see an improvement in their work but have the freedom to be creative with the design and colors. This could also work for elements of the periodic table, famous authors, for younger children, animals, colors, state capitals, etc.

What is a blog?

A blog is an electronical journal that enables people to share news, ideas, opinions, and communicate with others from all around the world using a website. It is a great tool to use in the classroom because it would motivate students to do research because what they post onto a blog, anyone could read, not just the teachers. It is a great way for students to express their opinion, use technology, and research and debate.