Awesome Flash Game about Admendments!

Just finished playing a court game twice and it was really fun and educational about the court system. This could be used effectively as a review for the amendments. The site was Do I Have a Right? Game

WordPress for School Use

I just stumbled on the fact that blogger cannot be accessed in our schools due to the wonderful security wall! :) So I am thinking that wordpress would be better since I can access it at home to post assingments for students who miss and such. I would also like to be able to have students leave feedback but I am not that familiar with wordpress...I guess I have some research ahead of me :)

New fun way to do research!

Just read a post by an old professor(Jonathan Rees) about holding an "Iron Chef" type of reasearch topic. It sounded sooo cool! Instead of having a mystery ingredient there is a mystery topic or question. Since the Iron Chefs select a list of ingredients as teachers we could provide a list of primary sources using Google Books and Chronoling America newspaper articles. The students can work in teams to do the best research they can. He is a college professor looking to do this in his classes but I think that it could easily be adjusted to do at a lower level. By adjusting the topic to grade level and adjusting the primary sources to not only be newspaper sources but Images found on the internet or in thier textbooks. In general it seems more like a modified competitive web quest than anything else. It will help speed up the research process becasue if it follows the Iron Chef format there are some pretty big limits on time. I think that this could be really fun in my US history classroom!

Animoto!

Animoto a new way to produce music video type slide shows. Seems to have some more cababalities than Windows movie maker. Online program comes with preloaded songs you can use that already have the rights aquired. Something that students can use to make movies from pictures online! This would work perfectly with a video recorder or a digital camera in the classroom. The really cool thing it is avaliable for free for educators! Seems like an awesome resource I can't wait to play with it a little!

TEC 1st Post

My expectations for the program, one thing I am excited to learn about, and how I feel technology will change my classroom.

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I have pretty high expectations of the class becasue I really want to learn how to use technology effectively. I enjoy playing with technology on my own and using it as the teacher but I really want to learn how to enrich students experience in my class through technology. I expect this program to enable me with techniques to enhance my instruction and activities in the class

I am really excited to learn about the smart board and the senteo unit that goes along with it! I think that this technology will really help me to engage my classes! I never really got to play with a smartboard in my college educaiton classes so I am really excited to get the chance to now in my class! :)

Finally I feel that technology will change my classroom in the way the learners relate to my content. I think that many learners tend to shy away from history because of the previous experience they have had with it. My hope in adding technology to my class is that students will learn to appreicate history and enjoy some aspect of it.

First Post with History Technology:)

Readers,
The fun part here will be learning about all of the different forms to technology that I can use in my classroom. This will be a learning experience:) I have always enjoyed gadgets and the latest technology so it will be fun to apply this to the class I teach.
Now when most people think about history classes they think BORING! Now this is usually because the primary method to teach history is lecture. Now if a teacher is to add interactive elements with technology....boom! you have them hooked. Our students today are learners in the 20th Century! We have to treat them that way. Some history teachers still to this day use the stand and deliver approach along with read this and answer that. Until as a group we can begin to fix this forever will our generations of kids grow up without the knowledge of their nation or the world!