MindMap Reflection:
In the past, I took several tote bags full of teacher textbooks and other resources home to get ideas and to create lessons. Now, I take my school laptop home every day to search the internet. I prefer to bookmark those sites that are the most helpful instead of always conducting searches for information and ideas. I usually visit those “tried and true” sites first then I’ll go to bing.com, dogpile.com, or mamma.com. Also, instead of having lots of physical folders with everything that I need I have created folders within folders of resources (documents, pdfs, scavenger hunts, and so forth) on my laptop. Generally, I use two computers at the same time, my school Dell laptop and my handy dandy iMac. It’s much easier also to do my college homework with these two computers since I can watch a YouTube video on my Mac on how to do something and then complete the task on the laptop.
YouTube is one of the best sites to learn how to do something. When I first learned about YouTube, I thought that it only contained social videos for entertainment. Now, I have found that there is a great wealth of tutorials that help me with college, school, and home. The academic supersites are also helpful. These sites usually contain learning games, worksheets, and other cool links to teach my students. Finally, I find that the Web 2.0 tools on the internet are fun to use and fun in creating a learning product.
When I have questions, I usually conduct a search on bing.com or go to YouTube.
I'm not sure how to share the links on my mindmap. I did hyperlink each site in Webspiration but those links aren't active in a jpeg format.
ReplyDeleteGo to the following link (I hope) to view this mindmap and it's hyperlinks:
http://www.mywebspiration.com/view/609594a3193
Great post Brenda. I like have my school laptop as a digital tool too. Have you tried school tube and teacher tube. They also have great educational videos. As I look for ways to make my classroom a 21st century learning center, my digital tools have been a great resource.
ReplyDeleteBrenda-
ReplyDeleteWow your network is very extensive. I was going to take this angle but instead of listing such websites I was more broad. However I like that you did list websites you use because I think I wanna check some of them out. I agree that networks make it easier to house information. Carrying a laptop and resourcing information from the Internet is more convenient than lugging tons of books around. Book marking popular sites is a tool that I have also found useful. I hate when I forget to mark a site and I have trouble finding the site. Great post!
Brenda,
ReplyDeleteGreat reflection of how the Internet has allowed you to shed your paper load and reduce the need to search for resources when planning a lesson. I too have found that once I find sites which address my immediate need, I file them away so that I do not have to search for them again. The Internet has become an invaluable tool for increasing knowledge and building networks.