What I learned in Class Today

First we started off the day by taking attendance. We wrote on the board for the first time, which was fun and easier than expected.

We talked about Chapter 2. The people that presented today used Prezi, it was interesting to see one of our classmates work on a different type of presentation tool.

Presentation Do's and Don'ts

-watch your words (...um and ...like) and don't broadcast them, just move on and be aware of them

-knowing the technology-some things are not going to work the way you think they are going to work (try and mess up is better than not trying at all)

-Organization-make sure you are well prepared

-Variety in the presentation

-Great job moving around the classroom, great movement-progress monitoring (don't move too much)

-a bit long...the presentations are 30 minutes long

-be aware of the questions you ask-do not ask "not" questions when using multiple choice (because they are confusing)

-Be cautious about relying too much on notecards

-clarify the words that you are using-(example: firewall vs. filter) make sure to use the correct words when you are talking about your chapter

-Make sure the data that you use in your presentation is up to date

We also talked about different websites that we can use in our classroom. We talked about WebQuest, which gives an intentional use for the Web. We can use this tool right away as a teacher because the WebQuest is already planned and made for you.

We also talked about website credibility. We talked about the different steps that we should do while evaluating websites. This is so important for our classroom as well as in our own lives. One thing that is very important when searching is triangulation. Triangulation is finding the same information in different locations. One of the websites that we can use in our classroom is "All About Explorers," which is a website that is made by teachers to help students learn about fake websites. We have to be careful of the domain names. We saw an example of a .org website that is not credible at all. I think this is such a useful thing to know and teach in our classroom.

We also took some class time to revise our inquiry questions. We each shared our question and had other people help us make our question better. I really enjoyed getting feedback so that I can make this question meaningful for my future students as well as for myself. I think that this is a very useful process for us because it helps us think critically about our questions. Having our peers reflect on our question provides us with more ideas to make our question more polished. My question is: How can educators use technology to support learners with autism spectrum disorder?

We learned about Scratch. It is a very interesting tool. It is a great interactive tool that we can use in our classroom to make student's learning more meaningful and fun.