Dr. Alice Christie's website is a great resource. She is obviously very knowledgeable and excited about technology in the classroom. I have already bookmarked her page Search Engines and Subject Directories for Kids not only to help me find kid friendly search engines for my students, but for my own children at home as well. The research sites she list will be great and helpful resources. I love the virtual field trip idea. Field trips are very expensive these days. My daughter's 3rd grade class is going to the New Orleans Zoo and it is costing $35 per person. The cost can prohibit so many people from going on a field trip. Time and distance is also a factor. With the virtual field trip, you can go anywhere and never leave the classroom. I also enjoyed looking at her photography. What she did with the daisy picture in Photoshop CS2 as far as color goes was beautiful. I loved how she was able to manipulate the contrast to create new, colorful pictures.
I think iTunesU is a great way to continue learning once you leave the college classroom. You will have access to knowledgeable teachers and you can listen or view only what you need at the moment and in your own time. As teachers, we will have to be constantly learning and adapting to new technology as it becomes available. I think itunesU could become a very useful tool to us as teachers.
I googled iPods in instruction to see if I could find any information. I found a great research brief titled Using iPods for instruction. It listed several ways to use the iPod in several different class setting from music appreciation to art history. IPods can be used by all students from K-12 including Special Education students. The website also listed several online resources.
This week on my Comment4Kids post, I commented on the blog titled Endless Ocean . They are using the game Endless Ocean for the Nintendo Wii as a tool for their learning topic. The students were very excited to find a sea lion and seals on there boat after having been away for a bit.
I like the post for Comment4kids. I think that it was a good idea to use something like the Nintendo Wii as a learning tool. It will keep the students interested and will make it easier for them to learn what is being taught to them by their teacher.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Dr. Christie's site is very useful, i bookmarked her website too! And after reading your blog post, i went back and bookmarked her search engine page, the link you included was very helpful!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads-up! I'll check out more of your posts.
ReplyDeleteI actually had Dr. Christie's class at ASU West. She was a great professor. Really down-to-earth.
Isn't Endless Ocean great? And now we find out that John Spencer of pencil fame had Dr. Christie. A small world indeed!
ReplyDeleteAnd now your kids are benefitting from her work. The circle expands.
Great job.