Team Rankings

Best- Shakespeare
2nd- Earthquake Damage Prevention

Worst- Waves and Sounds
2nd- Foreign Country

When reviewing three specific perspectives of each WebQuest, my team based the worst and best in relation to the degree of satisfaction in each perspective. For example, a team member suggested the Gorilla website as being the 2nd worst for time management, but ultimately decided the remaining two perspectives (higher order thinking and collaboration) of the Foreign Country assignment lowered the efficiency of this Webquest in relation to the Gorilla website.

Group Comments:
Shakespeare's collaboration was phenomenal! Each project required the ultimate team effort. The students are going to be forced to express an opinion in the creation of the play and will have to effectively work as a group in order to produce an entertaining scene. The creation of the scene requires the use of prior knowledge of MacBeth and to apply it to the scene, which satisfies the altudinist's perspective. The time police believes that there is a good "bang for the buck", meaning an excess amount of knowledge will be gained over the duration of each project.

Earthquake- The Webquest is very structured. The materials are listed and provided, so the project will quickly come together. Jaime Ford, the altudinist, believes that the limitations on the type and amount of resources used to create an earthquake enduring structure is an application to a situation we constantly contemplate in a real world dilemma. The collaboration is obvious in this project because the teams are constantly going to be working together. Designing and discussing ideas is just one example of the collaboration aspect of this project.

Waves and Sound- My group unanimously agrees the website is disorganized and hard to follow. The goals are hard to find, the teamwork requirement is not evident, and it seems like a lot of time could be wasting deciphering the purpose of the webquest.

Foreign Country- Overall, the project didn't seem to have strategies as strong as the other projects, including the Gorilla Webquest. A competitive atmosphere drives the collaboration factor in this assignment.

The Affiliator

Your Impressions

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
Gorillas	The introduction demonstrated class collaboration during the class conclusion process. The students are required to find a solution to the Gorilla dilema at hand.	The Webquest project displays efficient collaboration.
Shakespeare	All three projects supply ample amounts of teamwork experiences. Especially the scene of Macbeth, the scrapbook, and sonnet.	No deficiencies found.
Earthquake	I feel like the teacher sets up a beauitful learning strategy that nearly forces the students to work together on this project. The limitations on number and type of resources really requires a higher order of thinking that can only be solved with a team's effort.	Not applicable in my opinion.
Foreign Country	The fact that the assignment is a contest really induces a competitive collaboration of the student's project. Especially in the sense that the students have to prepare a presentation that fits the attention of the audience.	The project appears to be an individual Power Point project. If the students perform in groups, then I believe the collaboration is at a minimum and is not shared evenly across the team's mental capacity.
Waves & Sound	The site contained a few neat things to watch and play with...	Extremely deficient in collaboration. The Webquest's organization was hard to follow, and the goals and objectives the teacher outlined did not appear obtainable with the projects on the webquest.

The Top Ten School Experiences

After watching this fourth grade class experience, I started reflecting on my personal class experiences in K-12 classrooms. The first thought I had was how lucky it is for these young students to have this gifted, dedicated teacher! A lot of the projects I participated in happened near the end of my high school career. Prior to this only one teacher really jumped out of the comfort zone of education. Her name is Mrs. Laura Fullen. Mrs. Fullen was my 7th grade language arts and science teacher at Lumpberport Middle School in Lumberport, West Virginia. We performed a lot of hands on projects in both classes because she wanted to revolutionize learning in her classroom. In fact, Mrs. Fullen's plan was to eliminate the use of textbooks in her classroom! She used the state C.S.O.'s to create methods to not only prepare use for state testing but also improve our reading, writing, and scientific thinking skills. During high school, Mr. John Mitchell Jr introduced collaborative work sessions to his classes. These classes weren't as effective as others because I was the major contributor in EVERY project... Students lacked pride and interest in pretty much EVERYTHING in my high school.

My instructor asked this question...

Is your learning style addressed in this activity? How? Give me an example.

I'm not sure if my learning style was addressed in this activity... I did listen and watch the video. I read a few things from the students and the teacher's project description.
Hmm.... I don't know how to repsond to this question.
[11/18/10]-->At the time, I mistook the perspective of the question. If I were one of her students, then I believe she addressed my learning style. A multimodal learner involuntarily requires a teacher to "spit" every form of his or her knowledge out. For example, I grasp a better understanding of a concept the more I see, hear, touch, read, and write. I think she sets up each of these opportunities (for me) in many aspects of the project.

I want to become a teacher as powerful as the one displayed in the video I have included with this posting; however, I feel that  numerous amounts of barriers will keep this as a challenge. I can talk for days about barriers and hurdles, but I would  rather talk about them as they arrive. I think every day is going to bring a barrier of some sort. The best way to open the doors for my students is to come with a never give up attitude and continue working on being an extemporanous person.

Sharing is our work!

I really enjoy using blogs to enhance this course. I feel like the content is presented in a modern form of communication and can grab the attention of students. There are a lot of skills that I have learned in this course. For example, posting links, pictures, graphs, and other information that I can share with a group of people. Anybody who wants to reach the information I want to share has it at their fingertips. In fact, one of the reasons I decided to be a science teacher is because of my enthusiasm to share what I know from my scientific standpoint. Blogger allows me to do this on a large scale.
I do not plan to make additional posts to this blog after the conclusion of this course because I want to preserve it in its current form. Because I want to use it as an artifact to enhance my teacher portfolio, I want this to display certain aspects of me; however, I would definitely consider using blogger in my future classrooms. I am so excited that I have learned multiple ways to teach students with technology and hope to use it to grab interest and increase the effectiveness of science collaboration.
I believe a strong teacher has a so- called tool belt. Rather than using one routine method for teaching, a strong teacher presents information in various forms. Everything in this course is going to be attached to my tool belt in the future.

My personal favorite media literacy is collective intelligence. In Blogger, I have "followed" my class mates, which means I allowed myself to view the work of my classmates.  A lot of times I find myself reading their responses to specific assignments and thinking about their work compared to mine. By doing this, I have learned a lot of information and I believe I have taught some information at the same.

VARK Questionnaire

The VARK  Questionnarire concluded me as a multimodal learner.
I have known these things about me for a while now, but I have recently realized that chemistry curriculum requires a multimodal learner. I hope that I can help my students learn in a variety of ways, so I can effectively teach them chemistry content.

My Results:
Visual: 9
Aural: 10
Read/Write: 7
Kinesthetic: 11

Trimolecular Twitter Reactions

In a Blog Posting answer the following questions.
1. How do you feel about the limit of 140 characters?
  The character limit helps me make my writing more concise! :)

2. Did you alter something you were going to say based on the length?
  YES!!! I had to use some skills I learned to use when writing a chemistry lab report!!

3. Do you think texting and twittering can have an impact on the way you write? How?
   YES!!!! I think it can have a positive impact on many aspects of my life and writing. If anyone went about twitter as an educational system, then it could also be helpful to them. I feel like I can use twitter as an education resouce in my classrooms, and I think it opens up colloboration just like Edmodo! As for texting, I think it can cause me to be lazy. I need to focus on distinguishing a lazy form of writing with a professional form, so I can use texting with my family and friends in an effective way.

Texty Poem

Treat othas hw u wan2B treatd.
uv 2 giv respect 2 gt respect
\_/ lots of OJ
u cn achieve WE u wnt by seting yr mnd 2 it.
:)