Monthly Archives: July 2011

As part of  a class I am taking on Educational Technology, I watched a session from ISTE 2011. I decided to watch a session a session called “60 in 60”. The presenter, Brandon Lutz, shared 60 web tools in 60 minutes. I want to share a few of them with you.

http://www.freerice.com/

A simple question and answer site with various categories. For every question you get correct 10 grains of rice is donated to the hungry. A few minutes of learning  can make a meal.

http://www.aviaryeducation.com/

A site that allows you to create and edit, music, audio, pictures etc. I find it to be a fun site to play with. I spent most of my time trying out the music and audio sections of the site. I am going to hold my judgement of the educational benefits because I am not musically inclined.

http://www.glogster.com/

I have  tried this site with my classes and experienced mixed results. Most of my students do not have email accounts, so it can be difficult to save them. I think that this is a wonderful tool for older students. I might try it again with my 5th grade and see what happens.

http://www.qwiki.com/

After looking at this site, I find it an OK site that will reference many different topics. I need to research it more to see exactly how reliable the information is, but it is a start.

There are a lot more sources that you can use, try them at https://60in60.wikispaces.com/ISTE2011.  Some maybe good for you, some may not. That one is one thing that i like about this. Nothing is perfect for everyone, it just has a lot of stuff so somethings should be good for you.

Every year in the fifth grade at my school they do a research paper on a particular state.  It is called the State Report. Part of my responsibilities in this assignment is teaching the students how to do better research . Inevitably someone brings up Wikipedia and such begins my explanation of wiki’s – the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good

Wiki’s allow students (or other users) to collaborate on a website or project. A group of students can work on a Hagaddah.  The teacher will be able to see who gave their input (based on their screen names) and who did not.  It therefore fosters individual  accountability on a group project.  Students can also edit each other’s parts to ensure a better outcome.

The Bad

Wikis are editable. Unfortunately, there are people who will wrongly edit a wiki, either by accident or on purpose and some people may not even know. In the past few years, Wikipedia has gotten better at reviewing changes and making sure that they are correct. But not all wikis are that aware of changes. I tell my students that Wikipedia is a good secondary source. They cannot use it alone, they need to corroborate the info with another source.

The Ugly

Not so much ugly. Wiki’s are a good and useful tool that many teacher’s currently use and more should use.