Week 10

This week, we began class by meeting with our groups for our presentations next week. It was a good time for us to finish organizing and making decisions about our presentation. We were also able to ask any "last minute" questions while in class. We found it difficult to find very many times to meet outside of class, so this was helpful.
Next, we learned about Inspiration, a website we will use to summarize the content we present in our groups. We learned how to make outlines and diagrams and transfer our information into various types of documents. We also briefly discussed Kidspiration, a similar site that is more child-friendly. Although we were not able to see this in class, we heard about the speech that is available on this site, the colors, and many images that are available in this version of Inspiration.
Third, we discussed teaching Social Studies with technology. The three types of technology we discussed are digital primary sources, virtual field trips, and geographic information systems (GIS). We looked at a variety of sites that will allow students to get close to primary sources they may not normally be able to see, that zoom in on various locations showing landscaping, populations, etc., and look at some tours and trips of locations the students may not be able to travel to.

Many topics from this class session can be applied to the classroom when we are teaching. I think that either Inspiration or Kidspiration will be great tools to help students outline and organize their writing. It might also be used in vocabulary studies, creating a tree with synonyms or other anchor ideas to help a student remember the meaning of a word. This site will be very helpful and useful to use with children in various ways.
I also think that the various sites we examined for use in teaching social studies will be good tools to use in the classroom. It is easier and more meaningful for children to learn when they have more hands-on experiences. Since there are many places that the students will not be able to travel to, they can get this experience by using one of these programs. It would also help visual learners examine landscaping and geographical information across the world.

As of now, I do not have any questions about this lesson. Everything seems very clear from our initial investigations of the sites and tools. I hope that the presentations go well next week!