Tuesday, February 9, 2016

#4- Exploring the limitless education tools online

Standard MAFS.2.G.1: Reason with shapes and their attributes.

This site has public access, and would be a perfect tool to use in the classroom to learn this particular standard. This is a virtual manipulative that lets the students create their own patterns by recognizing the differences between shapes. As mentioned in chapter 8, this tool falls into the category of content-specific software. This is a math software, and more specifically a geometry virtual manipulative. I would allow the class to individually go on the site to participate, and I would need to make sure that the computers used have the latest version of Java software to be able to access the site.
                                                                                                           
Throughout middle and high school, I have been assigned tons of research based papers. When researching I have always utilized google, and it is by far my favorite search engine. If I was looking for something very particular I would use google scholar and the advanced search tools. When I wasn’t using google scholar, I would still only use the web pages ending in .edu, or .org to make sure that my source was reliable. This was actually mentioned in the podcast, that it’s important to evaluate to URL, and domain. The podcast also mentioned the acronym ABCDT (author, bias, content, design, and technical elements) to help evaluate the sites when researching. I found this very interesting because most of the time I don’t consider all of those things. While some of my methods were mentioned in the podcast, I learned about new ones to evaluate websites even more thoroughly.

I was surprised how almost every search, what I was looking for was within the first few results. I was expecting it to take a lot more work, and that I was going to have to really search for the things listed. I have searched the web many times, so I don’t feel that I learned any particular skills through this assignment in that regard, however I did learn more about the standards by figuring out which one applied to each web search.

I have created a couple of my own web hunt challenges for you to try out:
-           -  Find a different math manipulative involving shapes

-           -  Find a website that explores Richard Nixon’s career as President

2 comments:

  1. I really agree with all of the pints that you made throughout your blog!

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  2. I had way too many research projects in high school too! Love your blog!

    ReplyDelete