Invested in Inquiry Based Projects

Exploring, investigating, and understanding are fundamental to school. Teachers have children do these things in a variety of ways, but after completing an Inquiry Based Project of my own I have discovered how useful and effective it is at doing all three of these things. 

Basically, an Inquiry Based Project or IBP, is a great tool to use to allow your students to explore a certain topic determined by the teacher and then do research or investigative work on it via the internet to answer question you pose as the instructor. The is not only a great tool for students to get acquainted with the web better, but I could also use this to introduce a new lesson to help formulate a basis for understanding or I could use this as a way to enhance material we are already learning about in my future classroom. The flexibility on subjects are vast as well. There is a plethora of options when it comes to websites and since I now understand how to evaluate one I can be fully confident that my students will be learning something. 

Completing this activity allowed me to do many things that a teacher would do in a classroom. I thought creatively about a topic that I thought my students should learn and used a textbook as reference for standards and depth of subject. I also was able to find a useful website and design questions and an assignment appropriate for a certain age group. This really helped me get a sense of what I can expect when I become a teacher and I will definitely use this tool when I get into my own classroom. 

Wading Through Quality Websites

As a student in school, I have heard time after time that I should make sure I pick a reputable and reliable source. As a future teacher, it is so vital that I also pick sites for my students that I can rely on and are trustworthy for my students to use too. Going through a website evaluation in TPTE 486 has given me the tools to fully understand how to go about properly evaluating any website to make sure it meets both my needs and the needs of my students. 

There were several components to the website evaluation. They included items like what type of browser or plugins were needed and the accessibility to most students including internet speed, alt tags, and cost. Some other things we considered were the author/publisher and their reliability and the accuracy and currency of information as well. Something that we evaluated that I did not consider when thinking of evaluation was the actual design interface of the website. This element is so important, however, because your students need to not only feel comfortable using the site you are asking them to use, but also they need to be able to use it easily without any confusion or clutter problems. Practicing evaluating a website has really given me a great idea of what things to consider when asking my students to use websites and explore the internet. The internet is vast so narrowing it down for my future students to only easily accessible, clean, and reliable sources is so crucial. 

What about Wiki?

Recently, in my TPTE 486 class I got to utilize and really explore using a wiki. The first real and only experience I have ever had with a wiki was using and viewing Wikipedia. Even as I was using it, I did not fully understand the concept of it. Anyone can just edit over what someone else wrote? How does that work? What if I edit it simultaneously with someone else? All these questions were answered when I learned to use Wiki and what exactly a wiki was. 

Wiki is a great tool that can be used for many different purposes, but basically a wiki is a website that allows its users to edit and change it making it much simpler to use than emailing to get responses (see picture to the left). All you do is write what you would like and others can help edit or alter it. For example, in my class we used it to hold a bio page of each of my classmates with a main directory page that is constantly editable. Learning how to use it was easier than I thought with a very simple layout. There are three main things to remember when using a wiki:Write, Edit, and Save. Once you have that down you can turn it into anything you would want. So then I got to thinking, how can I use this tool in my future classroom? 

Learning about wiki in TPTE 486 has allowed me to think about collaboration learning in a whole new way. I think collaboration on this scale could go a long way in group learning or whole classroom learning. This could be a great tool for English where we could write a classroom story together or write a document about a historical event that happened, taking us back to that time or place. We could also use it in math, where we could collaboratively solve a problem together or each student could post a single question on a topic that comes together to create a study guide for the class. Another use could be as a tool for you as teacher. You could use wiki to create collaborative lists of supplies needed for classroom, party, and field trip sign up that connect parents and involve them in contributing. This way, each student and parent could feel like a partial author, each contributing his or her part to the wiki. There is an air of caution that a wiki in general is meant to be constantly editable so teaching your students appropriate editing and use of this tool is necessary before you get started, but once you do you will want to Edit, Write, and Save every day! 

My Technology Education Expectations

My name is Lauren Owsley and I am so passionate about becoming a teacher. I am going through classes to fulfill my dream at the University of Tennessee in the Elementary Education Program. I am in the Urban/Multicultural cohort so there is a big passion for equal opportunity and enriching lessons. I am always looking for innovative ways to liven up the classroom, which is why I really love technology. I can remember using all sorts of programs when I first started to dabble into advanced technology of the time like Paint, Word, PowerPoint, and others to make my school projects creative. As I have progressed in my education through college I am excited to see that there are so many more resources out there! I have used web design in my own student organizations, I have used an exciting presentation tool called Prezi, created fliers and brochures with pages, and I have even tried to create shared documents in the cloud for classmates and study groups. So I have had my fair share of introductions to technology, but after choosing to take Theory and Practice in Teacher Education 486 (Integrating Technology Curriculum) I started to really explore all my possibilities when it came to avenues for children to learn with! I have learned to use several tools thus far that are going to be so useful to me. They include this blog, a website, and a wiki. I am really excited to see what other tools are out there that I can take advantage of. 

My expectations for this class align with my excitement. I really want to learn how to use these and other tools in a basic way, but also in a way that allows me to help my students get excited about what we are learning and can teach them in creative ways. As the world progresses in it's scavenger hunt for technology, being a teacher means that today you will have to understand those tools that students use and be able to implement them into your own classroom. You also have to find ways to connect your students with the material in a way that is fun, useful, and enriching. I would also like TPTE 486 to guide me into using more collaborative tools so students can help each other and we can work as a cohesive unit, but also educate me on ways to connect my students to me and useful materials that can help them succeed on subjects they may be struggling on. I hope that this class will provide me with not only instruction on how, but the confidence to come up with a few neat ideas of my own!