Meeting 6

Assignments

  1. Checkout our concept maps under "All About" Monday Night Concept Mapping.
  2. (Get your Delicious account if you haven't already, and) post something to your Delicious account that's of use to us. TAG it IDT7061. Post your URL to the wiki on the Delicious Links page of our wiki (under All About on the front page.)
  3. Read the wikipedia article on "Folksonomy."
  4. Finish up the rubric that can be used for the lesson plan assignment (due in 3 weeks!) with your partner and post it on the Lesson Plan Rubric page on the wiki.
  5. Post your annotated list of educational web resources on the Educational Web Resources page of the wiki.
  6. Read Chapter 13

Where to post your stuff

DONT FORGET YOU AND YOUR PARTNER MUST HAVE A COMPLETED RUBRIC BY MONDAY!!!!

At the begining of this always anticipated class, we opened up with what we all posted on the WIKI! Each students announced their exciting contributions to our page.

Next we transitioned to exploring our Concept Maps.

The ALL STAR AWARD WINNING CONCEPT MAP GOES TO:

  • TINA HEINDEL Her concept map was on the 5 senses
  • EMILY LOWRY Her concept map was on the NteQ model
  • JESSICA MARTIN Her concept map was also on the NteQ model
  • JJ HUTTON The singing songbird concept map was about computers as tools for learning
  • JULIE HASULY Her concept map was another one on the NTeQ Model

We discussed the pros and cons of concept map software (Inspiration in particular):

+Really easy to use, no real need for tutorials
+Lots of clip art options
+The outline to concept map function is pretty slick
-Time consuming
-"Cross platform" issues (going from a Mac to a Dell, fonts and graphics may be incompatible)

Concept maps and their application to teaching:

Shows how everything relates (lessons compartmentalizing)
Promotes organization

Other available software

Macromedia Freehand (Free trial!)
Adobe Illustrator (REALLY expensive!)
Smart Draw (Free!)
Mind Jet (Free trial!)
Topicscape (Free student version!)
Cmap Tools Description and Free Download - Kelly Wilkerson
Microsoft Visio - Kelly Wilkerson

Next we were drawn to the soothing voice of Dr. Martindale; he gave us an in class assignment posed as a "reflection paper." We were required to write or type 300 words on what Chapter 12 is going to mean to you as a teacher in terms of your teaching practice. Oh,boy! Then we had to turn our reflecton paper in, can you imagine?

After wondering how hard Dr.Martindale would grade our "reflection paper", we quickly changed gears to watching a movie about Social Networking: SOCIAL NETWORKING IN PLAIN ENGLISH by Commoncraft on youtube.com.

How to create Tags? Dr. Martindale showed us Examples of his Tags that he has creaTed on his own Delicious account. He has almost 1600 bookmarks! What is a Tag you ask?

Tags are keywords that categorize the bookmarks and allow them to be in several different groups.

Pssst! If you haven't created a Delicious account please do so NOW!

Back to Tags, no it isn't graffiti found on the expressway, but it is a great filing system. It simplifies everything in your Bookmarks!

Well how do you find a Tag? I thought you would never ask.

When completing assignment 2, we must use a specific tag: please name it IDT 7061

In discussing naming your Tag, we were asked; What is Taxonomy and Folksonomy? Does anybody know?

Folksonomy: taxonomy made by the "folks" and more about it Here
Don't forget to read the wikipedia article!

How to decide what to put on a wiki versus on Delicious.

BRENT thinks you can simultaneously use bookmarks and a wiki
EMILY stated that Delicious might be better, because an RSS feed is available. What is that you say?
An RSS feed is a way to keep track of news websites or blogs. It will tell you what's been updated without checking individual websites, and it is FREE,FREE,FREE!

Then we broke into pairs to start working on a rubric for the lesson plan we are going to be writing for three weeks from now. The information about the lesson plan is available on the ecourseware site under 'content' and 'word processing.' Don't forget to keep that information in mind.

Dr. Martindale introduced the term bookmarklet. We also learned that metadata is data about data. Ex. Bookmarks are data, and the tags are the metadata, describing the bookmarks.

WORD PROCESSING AND INTERNET APPLICATIONS

eCourseware discussion area was not available at this time: Word Processing Application: Use of Microsoft Word application: learning activity-students will examine and use a community newspaper as a guide to create their own newspaper. This is an excellent way to use word processing tools, including use of text variation-fonts, point size, style and color, as well as spacing, alignment, tabs, inserting clip art and pictures. Practice with refinement and reorganization of content through editing, spell check and the thesaurus should be a valuable learning experience with this application. (J.J.) Judy Hutton

Internet Application: Use of Internet Explorer application: learning activity-students will explore this application and use such search engines as Yahoo and Google to take a trip around the world via Internet where the teacher specifies destination cities around the globe, such as Canton, China, Athens, Greece, Paris, France, and Rome, Italy. The students would be given a Think Sheet and a journal to record certain criteria to expound about their findings on their Internet journey to historical places of interest. The pupils will note the types of climate, food, dress, language, customs, government, and lifestyles of each country; photographs should be collected or downloaded (if allowed). They will compose and type a report (using the word processor) titled "My Internet Trip Around the World", along with photographs of the places they visited on the Internet and present it to the class in an oral presentation with visual aids. Judy Hutton (J.J.)

If anyone is interested in a new wiki in development. Amazon.com has a site called Amapedia. It is one I found while looking for a site on Economics Essentials.

There is also a new project in development, Wikia.com, which is a Wiki of various wiki's on the net. Just thought it was interesting if anyone wanted to check it out... It needs some work, but the concept sounds promising.

http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia -- Chris Goodell