Reflection Week 3

This week we're learning about more tools on UEN that we can use as teachers, students, and in our personal lives. We explored Pioneer, Ebsco host, and other amazing things that UEN offers. Pioneer library is a search engine that provides quality results of peer reviewed articles, websites, and information. Ebsco host is a way to get full articles to read or to have our students use for reports. Some other amazing things were the games, interactive programs, and just the accessibility of so many other options.

As teachers we need more safe options to show to our students. They can be exposed to too many temptations if they are just searching the world wide web. Using safe search engines that only provide quality material for educational use makes me feel as a teacher that I am keeping my students safe and away from harmful things for their impressionable minds. Another, 'so what' aspect of what we learned was the great purpose of Ebsco host. This option available to us is great for me to have access to for reports, professional development, for information about a subject I might be teaching in my class, and for use by my students. Having free access to full articles is rare and a great find and I'm happy to now know where to seek quality information.

"So what?" I plan to use these programs when the need is there. I really see myself using the interactive features that are provided and the games created to teach and not just entertain. My classroom now has some more options! I would love for my students to go home and play a game as homework instead of having to use their book and some paper. They would be glad about that too. I really feel like the things we learned and discovered this week will be implemented in my classroom.