Week 6 Blog Posting

I think the delicious site is pretty interesting.  I like how you can load all of your favorite sites on the delicious and have it no matter what computer you are using.  It's also useful when you search for a particular kind of site.  For example, I clicked on education and found a link to a really neat site having great math lesson plans.  I think I will register for a delicious account because I think it is convenient and will help me with getting great teaching resources from the internet.

Excel Spreadsheets

After using Microsoft Excel for a gradebook and a material aid, I found it very beneficial and very useful. I would definitely use it in my classroom as a gradebook and also to make charts, graphs, and making math worksheets. It's very useful when you have a lot of data you need to calculate.

As teachers we use spreadsheets as visual representations to further explain our content's topic. We also will use it frequently for a gradebook. It has many advantages over a calculator because you can attach a name with the grades and do averages very quickly. You can also give a title to each grade to show your students what they made on which assignment.

Week 3 Assignment

I found a lot of interesting things on this website and the informational video about the software Inspiration. I looked at many examples and lesson plans the software creates. It uses many charts, graphs, and other visual representations to explain and demonstrate academic concepts; they can be used for a variety of subjects – English, math, science, social studies, etc. I am a math major, and there were several charts explaining how to do certain mathematical procedures. Many students are visual learners so this software would be very beneficial for teachers. I think all the diagrams and pictures students and teachers can choose from is really cool. This software would be very beneficial in the classroom; it would be great to use to explain topics and good for students to develop their research and ideas.

According to the website, technology can be very beneficial for writing. Technology would benefit writing such as research papers and essays. For example, the Inspiration software would help to outline research and the essay format, and from watching the video, it seems like an easy software to use but very functional. There is not a whole lot of writing in math, besides numbers, but I do think writing in math could be beneficial; I think students could make more connections and understand the material more if they write out what certain procedures or topics mean. And technology could be used for that. To use class time efficiently, I think having partner peer editing would be the best way. Students can give each other new insights and might find mistakes the writer missed. I think blogs would be advantageous to support peer feedback or using spell check and grammar check on word processors would also help.