Inspiration/web resources

Is Inspiration something you would invest in for your classroom? List some ideas in your content area where you could incorporate it.

I would definitely invest in Inspiration for my classroom. To be honest I feel that Inspiration would be better for English or History classrooms or even better, elementary classrooms. I can definitely find applications in math for this though. Plus, with students relying on technology more and more, I am sure that I would get more students attention by having them make concept maps or venn diagrams on the computer instead of having them use pencil and paper. Sometimes students get overwhelmed with all kinds of different concepts, and I think that these maps would really help them organize their thoughts. Here are some places where I could incorporate it:

Steps/scenerios when factoring
Types of geometric shapes
Types of graphs
Scenerios to prove triangles congruent/similar
How to solve a system of equations
Graphs/common values of trig functions

What are your favorite web resources we covered in class? What do you think you would use most? Why and how? Be specific.

I like the social bookmarking sites the best of all the web resources we covered in class. I cannot even begin to count how many times I found a great web site, went away from it for whatever reason, and could not find it again. With social bookmarking, I never have to lose a site again. This goes beyond the classroom, but has many applications in the classroom obviously. I could use a site such as diigo to keep my personal bookmarks and my ones that I may use for school. I also really liked rubistar, even though I probably will not use rubrics too much for math. When I need to make a rubric, that seems to be a great tool to easily and quickly make rubrics. I tried making a rubric for my unit plan last semester for Secondary Methods 1, and it was a pain to make. It would have been nice to have a resource to use as a starting tool like rubistar. It was also interesting to think of ways to use blogs as an educational tool. I mean I have seen and read blogs before, but never thought of using them in a classroom. There are many ways I could use blogs to communicate with students, and hopefully keep them more interested in what I am teaching.

I think I will use social bookmarking the most of all the tools we have used in class. One of the things that I know that I have to work on is presenting material multiple ways. With social bookmarking, I can search for a topic that I am having some trouble teaching or that the studetns are struggling with, and maybe find a lesson idea from another person's tags. I think that it is awesome that I can tag a source, then look at who else tagged it, then look at his/her tags. It takes out the search engine, or the "middle man", so to speak. With all the stuff going up on the internet now, I think that it is harder to search for specific material, but social bookmarking can help a lot with that. I can also use the tagging feature to share links with my students. I can just tell them to look at my page when they go home, and they can look up web sites that suppliment the lesson. This is so much easier than spelling out websites for them to visit or having to hand them out. Plus, this means that I can tag many different types of sites, so that different learners can use different sites. The possibilities are endless. With the social bookmarking tool I do not have to use classtime to go over certain sites or tools that they can use because they can look them up on their own. Or maybe I can spend less time going over it because of how easy it is for them to find the site. This means more instructional time, which is definitely a good thing.