Week 5 Reflection

I accidently published this on my other blog account that I had previous to this account that I tried to merge with this but I didn't know how, and I accidently posted on the other one. So here this is.

This week we learned how publish our google docs and create google websites. Using google docs is very easy way to suddenly have a type of webpage. Google sites gets a titch more complicated because it has a lot more capabilities. This is really like creating a real personal website. It is easy to use and easy for viewers to use. I love all the things and options it offers.

I think learning these about these things is extremely important. As teachers we need to know of these great tools out there to make our lives better and easier. I can see through this that teachers, students, and parents can now always be on the same page. If anyone has a question they can go the website and find the answer. The ability to use websites and other technology by google is really enhancing the capabilities of the classroom and extending it to home.

In my future class I will have a personal website for my students to check out and use. On it I will include a lot of things like homework schedule, assignment descriptions, and my personal information so that my students can get to know me. I would also use it to give my students access to different websites I assign them to visit and provide links to pioneer, UEN, and to interactive games. Great tool for the classroom and for the benefit of my students. Learning about this will also help me with my business and other things I want to do in life on the computer. I love it.

Maximizing Google

I did this last week but didn't really comment on it. Google is advancing the options and capabilities of its search bar. It now can do math, find addresses, and fix spelling errors. It is already a handy tool but they are making it really powerful. This is interesting because they are dominating the market with all of their new advancements and no one can keep up. But now that I've learned about SIRS and other search engines that don't take you to websites so that you can be a consumer they take you to educational websites. I feel a little bitter that they are doing so well. For my classroom this is a scary thing. My students can just type their math questions into the browser and suddenly the answer. I fear that more students are going to rely on getting answers that way than actually struggling to figure things out which will keep their knowledge at the surface 'remember' level. For me this means that instead of homework out of the book I will have to do memory test in the classroom and really challenge them by doing activities and not lecturing. More work for me but that is how I should be teaching anyway, but I'd like to think they are developing their math skills outside of class as well and that homework is helpful not just busy work. What do we do?