Engaging Students with Concept Mapping

Here is an example of a concept map.

1. Concept mapping is a great place start with writing. Whether it is a research paper or a creative free write, concept mapping allows the students to come focus what they want to write about, but also gives them the chance to brain storm ideas and explore options they may have not come up with on their own. For example your class is doing a report on an animal. In the concept map you do as a class you could come up with different reptiles, mammals, and all other sorts of things. Maybe the students will come up with things such as different habitats, or diets, and allow to students to come up ideas and that are more organized because as a class they got a chance to decided how to put their report on an animal together.

Another way a concept map could be used is to come up with different types of things in one category and help those thoughts be organized. An example of this would be a recipe project. Each student would have to write out a recipe but it would be helpful as a class to come up with different types a food and then go over the steps necessary to make a recipe. The ingredient list then giving clear and concise steps that allow for a successful ending product when cooking.

Concept maps are also excellent for checking what children already know. If you are beginning a geometry unit it would be good to test the class’s knowledge of shapes. For example do they know that a square and rectangle are both quadrilaterals and parallelograms? And how they relate each shape to each other, do they understand there are categories of shapes. From there you could then teach students how shapes are organized and what constitutes any specific shapes.

2. Using a concept maps allows the students to teach each other and give other ideas to each other in the correct way. It also gives the teacher a formative assessment to figure of what needs to be addressed or reintroduced to the students. If students completely miss an important topic then the teacher is aware of what needs to be taught. Students also teach each other through concept maps. Students are more likely to remember information shared by other students.

3. Concept mapping should only be used on assignments and projects that a lot time should be spent on, and require a lot of planning and before thought to the topic. Concepts maps are also good for organizing and sorting ideas for papers and stories. If a project does not require these things a concept would probably not be the best a good use of time.

Blogs and Wikis in Education

1) Identify and describe 3 interesting/innovative ways blogs and/or wikis are being used in K-12 classrooms.
Some classrooms are keeping their own blogs or updating their own wikis. This allows the class to chronicle its learning and makes changes to what they have learned as they learn more about a topic which clarifies what they have learned. Another way classrooms are using blogs is they are following someone else’s blog related to a subject they are learning about. If the students are learning about space and the teacher is able to find a blog by an astronaut or someone working at NASA, it would allow the students to learn from an expert on the topic and spark a greater interest than just hearing it from the teacher. The final interesting way is they are collaborating with classrooms around the country. A class can develop a project with a classroom anywhere in the country each can update a blog or wiki about they learned that day. So if the classroom in Maine makes a discovery that the students in Washington missed they can go back and figure out why this happened. They can add to each other’s knowledge and allow each of the classrooms to formulate theories and questions based on the information each is providing to the other.

2) Describe how you might use RSS readers/aggregators within a classroom setting.
RSS readers could be a very helpful tool in the classroom. For example there are many blogs where ideas on a topic are being posted. Rather than as a class or having the teacher check back every day, but whenever something new is posted they will be notified and this will save class time. Another way they can be used is many people write blogs about what they are learning or experiencing. If your class is following say someone who is one a trip to another country that you are learning about the teacher will be able to schedule the class time and whenever ever they are notified there s a new post by that person.

3) Describe at least 2 pros and 2 cons of using blogs and wikis in education.
With everything on the internet there are pros and cons to each with blogs and wikis there a lot of these they allow the class to do. For example a class can post a blog or update a wiki daily to show what they learned about the concept. This allows the teacher to assess what knowledge the students are gaining daily, but also gives parents a chance to check out what the student it learning. Also using blogs or wiki’s give the students computer practice. It gives them a chance to use the internet in a safe supervised environment. It also gives them a chance to practice things such as typing and spelling while on the computer. However, on the other hand using blogs and wikis can also be negative. Since any one is allowed to provide information on their own blog or add it to a wiki sometimes the information the students are encountering that is false or biased. So as the teacher it is very important that we check and verify and the information we are allowing our students to read. The second is tasks on the computer may be difficult compared to the amount of resources a classroom or a school has. If a class only has one computer it would be very time consuming to work as a whole to and give one student the chance to try and type of what they have learned.

Teacher Web Project Critique

1. A TeacherWeb would a useful tool to for a classroom. It allows the teacher to connect to families and also allow for safe web resources to be supplied to the students. The website gives the students family a chance to be involved and see what is happening in the classroom. It also gives the students an opportunity to check what homework may have been assigned while absent. It also gives them safe links to help practice skills such as math or vocabulary. The last thing Teacher Web allows students to do is get to know the teacher better. Things like the about me page give the students and families a chance to learn about the teacher outside of the classroom.

2. Some advantages of using a TeacherWeb in the classroom are it allows the students to link to the web and gives them a chance to guide their own learning and discover what you want them to learn on their own. This gives the students a chance to feel more independent in their learning. The second advantage of using a TeacherWeb is it allows you to give students the opportunity to use supplementary resources to future their knowledge in subjects that interest them on their own. You can put up practice for math, or a link to a science site that may interest a student who would like to continue to learn more about a topic you have finished in class.

However, when using TeacherWeb and sites like it a teacher must be careful to allow the students to interact with real people. Teachers will often get caught up in the things a website allows them to do they forget that the student-teacher interaction is important for student learning and development. Some activities may be better on the internet, but some are still more helpful for the students to have them complete in real life working with their peers and their teacher.