WWT - Wiki Walk Through!

The Wiki Walk Through was an informative website about the wiki world. After completing the Wiki Walk Through, I feel that I have a much better understanding of what a wiki is. Before reading about wikis, I was confused about the differences between wikis and blogs, and why one would be better than the other. Now that I know more about wikis, I realize that Wikipedia is only one example of a wiki, and that wikis have an open structure that can be edited by many people. They are a great tool for collaboration!
Teachers may use wikis to share ideas about a subject or particular class for their students or other teachers. Wikis also are a great place to store resources, such as lesson plans. This is especially useful for students who have missed class. However, it is important to remember that while student need access to lesson plans and activities, they must not be allowed to access answer keys.
A page that I found interesting in the Wiki Walk Through was the Differentiating page. This page has many resources for differentiating instruction and other resources for special education teachers. As a future special education teacher, I found this information very beneficial. One of the resources I enjoyed reading about discussed ways to address student strengths using multiple intelligences. This page also shared best practices strategies for students with autism, as well as other students with specific needs.
Finding a broad variety of information in this Wiki Walk Through is a good example of what is expect in a wiki. When a group of people work together to present information that they know a great deal about, the collaboration is useful for people on the team and others who are less familiar with the information. This Wiki Walk Through definitely gave me a better big picture perspective on wikis!

Website Evaluation - Khan Academy

In my website evaluation, I reviewed the website khanacademy.com. Khan Academy is a website that provides tutorials for many content areas. There are videos for subjects including: math, history, english, and humanities. 

The website evaluation helped me to understand how to decide whether a website many be helpful in my future classroom. Also, the criteria used to evaluate the website gave me several ideas for when to use this resource. For example, I used this website to understand angle bisectors before I taught the lesson myself. After I used the website to refresh my own understanding, I then used it to introduce the subject to my class. 

After this evaluation, I know the criteria to look for in a website to use in my class. It helped me to find whether a website is reliable and useful. The evaluation also helped me to determine when to use a specific website. Since doing the website evaluation, I feel more confident when selecting websites for educational resources.

Teacher Blog Critique

In this post, I will evaluate a blog written by a special education teacher. The teacher writing this blog is also a father of two boys with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The Life That Chose Me is the name of this blog.

                                   
This blog covers many topics relevant in special education. There is a collection of posts about the IEP process, with details about each part of an IEP, such as present level of performance and parent and goals and objectives.

While I felt that the author was knowledgable on the topics that he posted about, the layout of the blog was very plain. The text and background is black and white without any graphics. However, I felt that the blog was straight forward and concise. The blog posts that stood out were about the author's children and also posts explaining the components of the IEP process. Several posts were links to YouTube videos that applied to the specific posts they were included with. For example:

This blog has archives of categories including: autism, behavior disorders, behavior analysis, educational technology, and parents' involvements. These posts are helpful resources for parents and teachers. There are many resources to understand issues in education, parenting, and disability categories.

TPTE 486 Course Expectations

I had mixed feelings about this technology class when I registered. While I was extremely excited to learn about ways to use technology in my classroom, I was worried about being able to keep up with the content. I feel that my technology skills are severely lacking because I grew up without any technology! All of the technology skills that I have are self-taught, so I loved learning about the keyboard shortcuts in the first class!
After attending my first class, I was much more relaxed and excited about learning ways to integrate wikis, blogs, videos, and much more! Now that I have begun my practicum for this semester, I have seen many ways that technology can be used in the classroom that I was unaware of previously. I am really looking forward to finding ways to add visuals to high school subjects, especially algebra and geometry.
Overall, my goal for this class is to find resources that are user friendly and engaging for my students. I am excited to become more digitally literate as well!