Education goes beyond the classroom and with that comes online learning on the internet and apps and educational websites. without websites and apps today most of our teaching would be
extremely difficult to accomplish because of how far technology has
taken us.Websites are now not just used for reading or viewing but also
for creating like the WebQuests.
One of the ways of extending learning beyond the web are virtual trips
or tours. A good example for this is how FSU offers online virtual
campus tours like seen here.
These virtual tours are the real deal and can be done sitting from
wherever you are. This tool along with others like GoogleEarth can be
used for projects or just experimenting with schools and world
locations. WebQuests are also tools to use as an educational website. I
wasn't familiar at all with Webquests until this class and it gives
students space to be creative while being constructive. It gives
students a guide but not an exact outcome to be "spit out". I believe in
the philosophy that school and education are not about students
regurgitating exactly what they taught but about understanding and a
deeper level of learning instead of just surface learning.
I use to think that there was only one type of educational website and that meant all teaching websites were teaching
resources. in reality there are six broken down into categories. The
most familiar one are Lesson Plans which are just that, website with
lesson plan ideas. A great teaching tip on using educational websites
and how to evaluate their credibility is with its domain. A legit
education site will have .org or .edu as oppose to .com.
Another great strategy to gather learning online information while
teaching is bookmarking. The site delicious makes it easy and fast to
save all those websites you probably will forget about six months from
now. This is called Information management and another example could be
articles shared on Facebook that you can save to your profile for a
later read or to use for a particular reason.
In conclusion, websites and apps now a days are a vital tool for children's learning in that it is a tool used on a daily basis for anything and everything.
RESOURCES:
Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
FSU Virtual Tour. (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2015, from http://www.visit.fsu.edu/virtualtour/
Sionil, Jose. "Classroom Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, 29 Oct. 2015. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.
Awesome - another Voki! :) But you forgot to give yourself credit in the resources for your digital tool creation. Your 'find' of the FSU virtual tour is pretty typical of most campuses these days - and it is a good recruitment tool, especially if you can't get there 'for real'. Appreciate your reflections on WebQuests as well - they are difficult to create but they have great potential.
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