Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Chapter 16 / Classroom Administration, Professional Practice, and Development

Q: How can basic software tools be used to facilitate print-based communication?
A: Communication is much faster when using software.  When you hand-write a letter to a parent you may worry about your spelling or whether or not the parent can read your handwriting.  Typing the letter is faster and you can check for grammar and spelling errors.  If the student forgets to bring back the letter you can just print-up another one - time saver.  Duplicate letters are faster, you just print as many as needed and sign them.  Using software to keep a personal record of your students saves time and lost papers.  Having this information in your computer, which only you know the password to - keeps things private.  When you create your lesson plans and weekly calendar it is much easier and faster to share this information with your peers through the computer.  Adding and deleting information is much faster and neater when placed in a software product.
Cindy

Chapter 15 / Assessing and Evaluating, Including Portfolios

Q: What is the difference between a working portfolio and a reflective portfolio?
A: There are five stages to consider when developing a portfolio-based assessment system.  Stage two is the Working Portfolio - in this stage you need to consider what items you want to include in your portfolio.  In stage three the students self reflect on the items that they have placed in their portfolio.  The main difference between the Working Portfolio and the Reflection Portfolio is that the former is the work that the student did.  The latter is a reflection of the students thoughts as to what they learned or did not learn about their work.
Cindy

Monday, April 18, 2011

Chapter 11 / Mathematical Modeling

Q:  What is microworld?
A:  A tiny world that students can learn all about that world as if it were a real world.  Unlike a simulation where students know that it is fake and do not pretend other wise.  Students that visit a microworld are encouraged to think and act as if it is truly a real world.  They are to solve problems as if this world did exist. Weird, I would think that with all the real world problems that do exist - that students could find and try to solve those problems.
Cindy

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Chapter 10 / Games and Virtual Environments

Q:  Identify five virtual environments available for classroom use.
A:  First, what is virtual environment?  It is technology that allows a user to interact with a computer.  This can be as basic as your keyboard and/or mouse, which allows you to type words and give some commands to your computer - this is a form of interacting with your computer.  It can be more advance such as wearing a data glove, which allows you to interact with the computer by pointing the glove at the screen.  This glove acts as a tracking device that gives the computer commands.  Because of the high cost for this technology many schools cannot afford it.  Those that can have included games which are reality worlds - one game called "Whyville" has 1.7 million registered.  This game teaches real world situations - like having a job, which teaches them a variety of skills.  Other games such as "River City" creates a problem and students work as a  team to solve the problem.  This problem could be an heath issue of years ago or a current problem that society faces today. 

The future for games will continue to grow and become an everyday part of the curriculum.  The more game developers create games that educators can incorporate into the classroom the more the gaming industry will produce.  The supply and demand will create an affordable market for more schools to be able to have gaming technology in their classrooms.
Cindy

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Chapter 4

Hi Everyone
I do have my chapter 4 posted.
If you want to respond to it you will have to scroll down
a few chapters.  I posted it a long time ago.
Thanks,
Cindy