Delicious

This is a screenshot of my Delicious account.

Wordle

This was not my first time using Wordle, however I learned things I didn't know this time. One of the things I learned is how to get two words to stay together once the Wordle is created. The site is incredible easy to use. It is fun, colorful, creative, and simple. Next time I think I would like to a speech or something more meaningful than just the words from one of my blog posts. I think this would be fun to use in the classroom to teach a lesson. I could type a bunch of information relating to a topic, for example, amphibians, into Wordle and repeat the most important ones, thus creating a stimulating, yet informative work for my students. It would also be fun to let students create "All About Me" Wordles in which they type in multiple times the things that are most important to them in their lives. Overall, I enjoyed using Wordle and look forward to using it again.

Evalutating a Website

I decided to evaluate Funbrain.
I was surprised to discover that evaluating it was more challenging than I thought it would be. A couple of the items were difficult to find, including the author and contact information. Other than this frustration at the beginning of the evaluation, the rest of it went fairly smoothly. Funbrain is both easy to navigate and attention grabbing. I was able to give positive answers to most of the questions on the list. I feel like anything that I had to fill in as a "no" was not necessarily a requirement in regards to this particular website. For example, there were not links to back up information, but the information provided by this website is elementary and not primarily focused on giving facts.
I appreciated evaluating the website because it encouraged me to look at websites differently than I ever have had to before. I now know how to analyze a source and determine if it is reliable and usable. I would use Funbrain in my classroom because I think children would enjoy learning and practicing skills in a new, unique way. As I said, it is easy to navigate and I think children who are old enough to have keyboard and computer skills would be able to use it on their own without too much assistance. It is an educational and would be appropriate to use in the classroom.
The only thing I would do differently next time is try to find a website where the author is clearly given. Other than that, I would not change anything. I will use this technique of website evaluation again in the future to decide whether or not a website is good for using in the classroom.    

Wikis

Last week we learned about Wikis in TPTE 486. Before these lessons I knew very little about Wikis. I had, of course, used Wikipedia before. Other than that, however, I did not even know such Wiki tools existed. The whole process of creating, editing, and publishing our class Wiki was surprisingly easy. I did not have any real problems with it, as it was all pretty easy to understand and figure out.

As for using Wikis in my classroom, I particularly like the ideas of creating a class encyclopedia, or going on virtual fieldtrips. My students could potentially create “About Me” pages like we did, but since I will probably be teaching lower elementary school, they will need some assistance in creating their own pages. Hopefully I will have some kind of aid in the classroom that can help the children create their page.

I think Wikis are useful tools that I will employ in my classroom more than once through the year.

If you would like to see our class Wiki please click here!