Searching Blogs

To find blogs about your subject area, you can do a blog search. Go to Google Blog Search and type in the type of information you would like to read about.

Please find and write about a blog that you would like to investigate. Include the URL in your post. If you're not sure how to make the link active, go back to the Blog page of the initial assignment.

Essential Questions

Why do we use essential questions?

WebQuests

Please complete your pre evaluation of 5 WebQuests for next Wednesday and answer the following question here in this blog:

What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of using WebQuests in your classroom?

Session 6 Reflections

In session 6, we showed some resources that we found helpful and then investigated a few new tools to use with the SmartBoard. We also looked at making Firefox the default browser and changing bookmarks from one browser to another.

The literacy class that many of you are involved with will collide with 4 of our previously scheduled trainings. To make this less of a challenge, I am proposing some changes to the January 30th training. We will have this training at the high school, and I'm looking for a volunteer from the high school teachers in the group to host the training. This training is after an early release training, and Mrs. Mackenzie said that we may start at 2:00. Although we had scheduled this next session to go until 5 pm, we will end it at 4:00 to allow for the literacy class.

I'm hoping that something can be worked out so that we don't have to re do the remaining 3 dates...more on this matter at a later date.

Please respond to this blog using any of the 16 exit slip strategies that I gave you at the meeting. Looking forward to seeing you at the end of January.
Martha

Smart Board Resources

Here are some resources for the Smart Board. Look over these three links and choose at least two of these resources that you would like to show everyone. Please add the URL's to the resources that you are going to show in a comment on this post. That way everyone can get to the link. Make sure you tell what the link is about in your comment.

http://www.theteachersguide.com/InteractiveSitesSmartboard.htm

http://www1.center.k12.mo.us/edtech/SB/templates.htm

http://technology.usd259.org/resources/whiteboards/smartlessons.htm

Educator Resources @ Smart Tech

Choose one of the starred educator resources above at the following link:

http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/

How would this resource be useful to you? Comment here and be prepared to show your resource to the rest of the group.

Constructivism

We've looked at the Principles of Constructivism and the differences between teacher-directed and constructivist lessons.

Here are some interesting videos on Constructivism:


Video 1
Video 2


What are the first steps that you will take to use this information in your classrooms?