Emotional Literacy Scrapblog

References

Aubrey, A. (2010). Emotional Training Helps Kids Fight Depression : NPR. NPR : National Public Radio : News & Analysis, World, US, Music & Arts : NPR. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122526518

Emotional Intelligence Test (Emotional IQ). (1996). Discovery Health :: QueenDom.com :: Assessments. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://discoveryhealth.queendom.com/eiq_abridged_access.html

Family Links - Nurturing Programme. (2007). Family Links: Transforming Schools and Families. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.familylinks.org.uk/nurturing/quiz.htm

Health Promoting Schools - Emotional well-being - Emotional literacy. (2008). LTS - advice, support and resources for education in Scotland. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/healthpromotingschools/practitioners/topics/emotionalwellbeing/emotionalliteracy.asp

Novick, R. (2004). Nurturing Emotional Literacy | Child Care Aware®. Child Care Aware | America's Most Trusted Child Care Resource. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.childcareaware.org/en/subscriptions/areyouaware/article.php?id=19

UWC Online - Online Etiquette. (2010). University of Wisconsin Colleges Online. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://online.uwc.edu/Technology/onletiquette.asp

What is your emotional IQ?. (1996). Queendom.com: Tests, Tests, Tests and more Tests, The biggest testing center in the world with personality, intelligence, relationship, career and mental health related tests.. Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www.queendom.com/tests/access_page/index.htm?idRegTest=1121

Virtual Frog Dissection

Original Image: "Poor Thing"
Flickr Photo by shouldbecleaning
Released Under An Attribution 2.0 Generic Liscense
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

In my TE 401 course, some of my classmates decided to integrate technology into their final lesson by doing a virtual frog dissection. As they presented in class, I realized that this website appeared to be a tool that students could really learn from. Therefore, I decided to spend this week looking more deeply into the contents of this virtual frog dissection.

This website could make a lot of great connections for the kids. For example, it gives them an outline of how the frog's body systems are similar to and different from a human's body system. This allows the children to take the information that they are learning and extend it beyond the frog that they are cutting open in class. The more connections the students can make between the frog's body system and the human's body system, the more they will understand why it is important that they are doing this frog dissection at school.

I also think that it is very valuable that this website portrays pictures, in addition to providing a vocal track that tells you additional information about the pictures. This website then appeals to more than one type of learner. It satisfies both the auditory and visual learner.

If I were using this technology with my class, I would allow them to first watch the introduction. This tells them why frog dissection is important and what commonalities they can expect to see between humans and frogs when they are dissecting. I would then have the students watch the "external anatomy" video. I would tell the students to follow along with the video and see if they can find everything that the video is talking about on their own individual frogs. The students can then watch each part of the virtual frog dissection and complete their own live frog frog dissection along with the video. The video is broken down into a series of shorter videos that describe how to locate each of the frog's body systems. If the students feel that the video is moving too quickly, they can pause it, cut open the frog, look for a particular part of the body system, and then start the video again.

I think that using this video as a tool during the frog dissection would be extremely useful. Every time that I have ever had to do a dissection, the directions were in a paper and pencil format. This is difficult because it is often hard to tell what you are supposed to be looking at, from written directions. Even when there were drawings of the inside of the frog attached, it was difficult to tell if what I was seeing inside the frog was the same as what the arrow was pointing to in the picture. By watching a video of an actual frog dissection while you are in the process of dissecting, you can look at the real frog on the screen and compare it to the frog that you are using in class.

Blogs, Wikis, and Webpages: What's the Difference?

Blogs, wikis, and webpage sites like google or weebly are all excellent resources that teachers can utilize, but each are good for different things. Blogs are a great resource for sharing information with fellow colleges. Blogs are most useful when they are updated on a regular basis because then other individuals will check your blog frequently for new information. Blogs are written by one person, and other people may leave comments on the information that you have posted. They become almost a source of dialogue between the initial blogger and fellow people in the blogosphere. Blogs can be a platform for discussing issues and for sharing information between your network of friends and collegues. I use blogging to find out good sources of technology that I can use in the classroom and also to read about good teaching practices that I might want to implement in the field.

Wikis are a little bit different because it is not simply the creator who posts information and everyone else comments on the information that they posted. Instead, anyone that the creator has authorized to do so can edit the site and add their own information. Therefore wikis would be a great place to have a class website because you could post things like the snack calendar and parents could edit that calendar to tell you when they are planning to bring snack for the class. You could also post good educational websites for children, and parents could add websites to your list as they found them. On wikis, you are all working together to effectively construct a space with useful information. Wikis could also be helpful when working on group projects. One person could post a draft of the project, and all other members of the group would have a chance to look over the project and edit it before it was turned in to the teacher.

Sites like Google and Weebly are great for portfolios because other people are not able to edit these sites. They are simply a platform for displaying information. You would use these tools to create websites where your intention is for the public to view the site but not necessary participate in the process of creating or improving the site. For an online portfolio, you would want an employer to view all of the information that you posted. However, you would have no need for an employer to comment on your Google site because they will ask you any questions that they have during an interview.

Therefore, blogs, websites, and wikis are all great resources that teachers should utilize. However, which form of technology you choose to use will depend upon what your intended purpose for your audience will be.

Wikispaces

Original Image: "Wikispaces"
Flickr Photo by thomcochrane
Released Under An Attribution 2.0 Generic Liscense
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

The Wiki that I have created is a way for me to communicate with parents outside of my classroom. On it, you will currently find a November snack sign up so that parents may sign up for a day to bring snack for the class during this month, if they choose to do so. Also, you will see that there is another page which has useful internet links for children. These are a variety of educational web pages that I have found that will provide students more practice pertaining to the topics that are covered in class. This practice is presented in a fun and exciting way. The goal of including these websites is to make students want to learn outside of class because it is fun for them. This is something that my six year old cousin's teacher has done on her website, and my cousin really gets into playing these games. As a result, she uses her teacher's website frequently.

I can see a variety of ways that Wikis could be used in the classroom. You could use a wikispace to create a site that will better connect you with parents at home, as I have done. On it, you could post the student's homework each week. Maybe you could post a few exceptional examples of student work on the Wiki each week, with different students being recognized all the time. This would encourage parents to actually check the Wiki frequently because their children would want to show their parents that they were the one selected as an example of exceptional work this week. You could also have parents sign up on the Wiki to help out with events like holiday parties or field trips.

As a teacher, you could also have students set up Wikis to assist them with group projects. This could mean that students post group projects on the wiki and then all the students in the group can have access to the Wiki at all times, continually editing and revamping the assignment until it is due. It could also mean that this is a way for the students to communicate so that they don't have a stream of 50 emails back and forth pertaining to the project. This way all of the information that they need for their group project would all be in one spot.

In one of my deaf education classes, we used the wiki in this way, and it proved to be a very effective technique to ensure collaboration and to keep everyone up to date with what we were working on, especially because our group of colleagues was spread out between Michigan, Maui, and Guam. However, we only took advantage of the Wiki for editing purposes, not for group communication. I think that our group could have been much more effective if we had used the Wiki instead of email for communication. Emailed communication became very difficult because my inbox was soon filled with 50 group emails that were spread out all over my inbox. This made it very difficult to locate and access the emails when I needed to refer to them again. Overall, I think that Wikispaces can have a wide variety of positive impacts in the classroom as long as teachers know how to utilize them!

Bibme.org

If you get a chance, check out Bibme.org! For me, one of the most annoying tasks associated with writing a paper was completing the bibliography or works cited page. However, this site makes the process quick and easy. You simply type in the pertinent information from your book and select APA or MLA. Then the site creates the citations for you. If you don't want to type in the name, author, copyright, etc., you can simply type in the name of the book and the site will find it. You then click on the book and it brings up all the pertinent information for a works cited page for you. You click again and the site adds this information, in the correct order to a running works cited column that it creates on the side of the screen. When you are finished, you can import this information right into a word document. This is a great website that makes citing resources much easier!

Pageflakes

I have recently discovered Pageflakes, and I am really enjoying it. In fact, I like it so much that I have set it as my new homepage. Pageflakes is a website that has different applications that I can tailor to my interests so that when I log on to the internet, links to all of my favorite pages are accessible instantly. For example, on my Pageflakes homepage I have decided to have applications which connect to my gmail, delicious, flickr, facebook, and Google Calendar accounts. I also have applications that show me the weather and movie showtimes for East Lansing. In addition, I have a customized To-Do list, and a calculator. You can also make Pageflakes into your RSS feed so that you have everything in the same location. I have not yet done this because I really like using Bloglines, and transferring over all of my information seemed like quite a daunting task. You can even like pageflakes to your Twitter account if you want to!

One thing that I didn't like about Pageflakes is that you can only link to the applications that it has provided for you. Therefore if there is something that you really enjoy using and you want to put that on your homepage as well, you can't do it unless it's included within choices that Pageflakes gives you. Also, you can only link the mail function to popular email systems. Therefore, I was unable to link it to my MSU mail. Overall though, the positives outweigh the negatives. I love that I can get a lot of information all in one spot as soon as I log onto the internet! I would recommend you check it out, and tell me what you think!

My PLN

Original Image: "PLN-1"
Flickr Photo by cobannon
Released Under An Attribution 2.0 Generic Liscense
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

I love my Personal Learning Network because it allows me to easily access information that will be valuable for my profession. One of my favorite tools that I have obtained access to through this course is my RSS feed. I am currently using Bloglines and I couldn't be more satisfied with it. Using this technology allows me to quickly see if anyone that I am following has posted new information. This way I do not waste time searching every blog that I follow to see if new information has been added. One of the features of blogger that I really enjoy is having the ability to put the different blogs that I follow into categorical folders. This way, if I know that I only want to look at blogs related to social studies learning, I can click on that folder and focus on those specific blogs. My RSS feed does not limit me to professional information, but also allows me to follow blogs that fall within my non-academic interests such as sports or deafness.

I have tried to give Twitter a chance, and I do like that everything on twitter is very concise. Therefore I can search through different feeds until I find something that appeals to me. I can then look further into it if there is an article that is tagged within the post. However, I can't get myself into the habit of checking it like I do with my rss feed. I tried to post at least a few times a week during the first half of this course, but I have a hard time because I am longwinded and so I have to constantly think about how I can shorten my message. Over time, I have posted less and less on Twitter and instead posted more on my blog instead because my blog allows me to write as much as I want in one post. Therefore, I don't think that Twitter is something that I will use in the future, after this course.

Overall, I think that developing a Personal Learning Network has really helped me to figure out where to go when I want to find specific types of information. Now, I have a network of colleges, and I feel as though I have sorted through some of the blogs that I didn't like as well, to really find the ones that were the most helpful to me. I can now find information on specific topics more quickly and easily than I have ever been able to in the past.