Post 4

One thing you can look up in the book, that we also talked about in class were searching techniques. I do not really use any other search engines, so the one I'm relating to is Google. When searching you can use the "+" symbol to connect things. By using "+" you can eliminate words that do not help your search like the, a, and, etc. You can also put your search words in quotes. By using quotes, the search engine will search that phrase exactly. For example if you want to know about something specifically called Technology in the classroom, you should put quotes around it to find exactly that phrase. There are also more specific searches with Google; like Scholar, Images, or News. These help to narrow down your search, so that you get better results. Scholar can be used when researching or doing papers. Images can be used in the classroom if you are searching for an image for a powerpoint, and you can find video clips with the Video specific search. There are so many ways to search easier and make you searching time faster.

Since my last posting, we have learned about the differences between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0. I grew up using Web 1.0 and in since high school the web has changed more to Web 2.0. From my understanding, Web 2.0 is like the new stuff out, including networking cites, likes facebook and myspace!! I looked at a chart by O'Reilly that showed the differences between Wed 1.0 and Web 2.0 things. I feel like by knowing the difference I can help my students use these features to learn. We also learned stuff about searching, which is important so that I can have more effective searches to make my lesson plans more interesting and better for different learning styles.

The webhunt this week introduced me into a bunch of new sites to use in lesson planning, and a lot of them were free! One site I did look at, for the first time, was the Sunshine Standards page. In my Ed Psy class were discussing how to use and identify the standards in your lessons. I'm not really looking forward to having to go through all the standards and apply them to the lesson I've created. I can see how it is necessary, but I feel like that is going to take forever!! At least they are all online though, and broken into subject matter sections to make it easier for teachers!