Blog Post 4

• Lesson plans should be written with the intention to integrate technology into the classroom. For example, a teacher covering a standard focusing on WWI could use an educational game to make learning about the subject more interesting for the students. Generally, adventure games are the best ones to use in history classes.
• In a science class, a teacher could apply the Dynamic Instructional Design (DID) to their lesson plans for classes on any given week or month of class. This allows for complex plans to  be created surrounding a brief outline of steps. If a dissection week was to be planned out for several class periods, the teacher could use a frog dissection simulation to intrude their students to the lesson. This would be a seamless integration of lesson planning and applications of tech tools. 
• When creating a lesson plan using the DID model, the fourth step of this process focuses on selecting supportive technologies for the lesson plan. This step in the model provides teachers with easier opportunities to integrate the use of educational software into their classrooms. For example, 3D programs can be brought into a science teacher's classrooms to show students diagrams of planets (or anything, really) that they can manipulate and learn from. 

             For my use of technology in the classroom, I am choosing standard SC.2.E.6.1: "Recognize that earth is made up of rocks. Rocks come in many shapes and sizes." I would use the resource on http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/gamesactivities/rockssoils.html to teach my students about the different elements of rocks. This tool is classified as an educational game, and would present the new information to the kids in a fun way. In playing the game my students would not only learn that some rocks float, while others do not, they would gain the knowledge that many differences between types of rocks exist. 

            The internet is generally a great tool for students to use in their research endeavors. Internet access allows students to find information that they would previously have had a hard time locating. The internet has revolutionized the way people can access information, and without it modern research would be far more time consuming and tedious than it is. Software has further improved the way the internet has shaped the future of research. When learning information to further research, students have the capability to access new tools as they research subjects they are unfamiliar with. The internet can become a hindrance to the educational process when students abuse the information they find on the internet. Problems with plagiarism arise from students' growing dependence on the internet for research. It is extremely easy to copy and paste another person's work and pass it off as your own. When students do this, they take away from the educational opportunities their work provides. Despite the problems that can arise from plagiarism, the internet provideed the greatest revolutions of research of all time. 

Before my experiences in EME2040, I never evaluated sources properly. I would simply Google whatever I was looking for, then choose one of the first links that showed up. I knew I probably should have been more careful with what sources I was selecting, but I did not know what tools to find better sources with. In the lessons in class, I learned that Google Scholar was a resource that existed to help students conducting research find the information they needed to be successful. When evaluating resources, they must be scaled by ABCDT, according to the evaluating internet resources podcast. The A stands for author, in which I am supposed to check the credibility of the author of the resource. The B stands for bias, as any bias present within the source must be taken into account when using it to learn or back up research. The C stands for content, as content for the resource must remain appropriate for its intended use. The D stands for design, in which the general website may need to be aesthetically pleasing and clear to be a valid source for use. Finally, the T stands for technical elements which determines how well the source works and is accessible. Generally, better resources have better technical elements. I am grateful to this podcast for giving me a scale in which I can evaluate my internet resources, as before I was simply gliding by on my "gut feelings" about the credibility of a source. 

As I worked on the web hunt assignment, I learned how to make my Google searches more precise. One of the tools I was most excited about was the fact that using brackets and periods, I could get Google to limit my search to a certain time period. I go to practice this technique on the question where I had to search for a Common Core article that was past 2010. One of the other elements of Google I used was the “-” feature that removes any unwanted results from the search.  I used this feature when I was searching for a website to create concept maps with other than inspiration. Google Scholar is one of the most useful tools provided by the search engine, as it provides peer-reviewed articles with credible sources to aid in research. There were a few surprises in the assignment as I learned some of the cool tools that Google has to offer. I found the Google print option extremely interesting and useful as it allows you to access newspapers from various dates throughout history. The unit converter and lyric finder in Google are equally useful as they provide quick and accurate ways to compare units of measure and learn the words to songs. For my "Web Hunt", I challenge everyone to:

1. Find a newspaper article from the New York Times on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.
2. Translate "I love you" from Russian to Finnish.
3. Find a street view image of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.