Bookmarking the Net

Bookmarks

Social bookmarking is a virtual place where one can save favorite sites in a specific category and tags.  Bookmarking can be useful in education when it comes to fellow teachers and students as it is an ideal way to share topics of common interest with fellow teachers and students.  Bookmarking can be categorized and tagged.  For instance, if all your students love astronomy, everyone, including the instructor, can contribute in bookmarking sites, articles, etc. in that particular field.  Privacy is important issue; the teacher needs to play an active role in monitoring content in links, sites, articles, etc.

 

Public Education VS Charter Schools

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Not long ago, I attended a workshop about writing grants in the field of education.  This workshop covered grants coming from private institutions to grants coming from the federal government.  In the workshop, charter schools were mentioned frequently.  It was quite amazing to discover that such schools were not facing an economy crisis as public schools.  I discovered that such schools are receiving a lot of leverage from private foundations and individuals.  This, in part, produces the abundance of monetary resources required to run the system of charter schools.  My number one concern is, however, if public education will reduce to something very insignificant or if both systems will continue to coexist side by side.  Being part of public education, I can not deny the many inconsistencies found in the way it is managed.  There is a lot of mismanagement that translate in waste of many resources.  I am not sure, however, if establishing charter schools are the answer to the endemic failure of public education.

Education and The Economy

The state of California is currently facing a major economy crisis. Education, as part of the state, is also being affected by this crisis. Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), not long ago, was building many schools. Currently, the district has many new school structures, but, many of its classrooms are empty and will continue to remain that way for some time. The district has stopped hiring new teachers; those currently teaching are noticing an increase in their class size. In secondary education, I can guarantee that the classes will reach one teacher for forty five to fifty students. The increase of class size can dramatically influence the quality of teaching. This phenomenon will also affect teachers’ ability to deal with the physical and mental overload.

Uses of Wikis

Wikis are revolutionary ways to create collaborative knowledge of free information.  This knowledge can be created, edited, re edited by one or many knower.  Up to now, there is access to wikis on an array of topics.  There is free access to wikis in different areas.  Such areas include but not limited to books, dictionaries, quotes, encyclopedias, etc.  For instance, students in a classroom can create their own wiki by sharing their individual knowledge learned in a specific content area.  Students will be sharing their thoughts; the teacher, however, will be responsible of checking the accuracy of information before making it available to everyone.  The availability of the information may be school wide or may rest in the world-wide web ready for free use.

RSS and Blogs

RSS

RSS is a feature used in the form of link to keep the reader with up to the minute or date news or information.  Adding an RSS in WordPress is a simple of a process as one, two, three.  First, go to a web site  that contains an RSS feed.  Press on the orange icon and it will lead you to a web site; copy the URL of that site. Afterwards, one needs to go to the appearance section in the dashboard section of your personal Worpress blog and add an RSS widget.  Once a widget is added, proceed to pasting the URL address that was copied earlier.  There is also a cell that allows to write the title of the RSS site. These steps are repeated whenever the one wants to add more RSS sites.

Online Educational Digital Resources

Digital Resources

The CLRN (California Learning Resource Network) website  hosts thousands of electronic learning resources that have been previously review by experts.  The site also lets you compare the digital resources and, as a teacher, you decide what resource is important for your class.  Everything is compiled in a massive searchable database.  The site also contains links to other educational resources.  Within CLRN, if you want to find digital resources by standards, simply click and open the tab named Learning Resources (ELR).  Then scroll down to Find  ELRs By Standard.  Once there, pick grade level,  subject, Strand, and press search.  You will find a list of resources by title, grade, description, publisher, etc.  Pick the ones yo want to evaluate.  On the other hand, It is also possible to find resources by  opening the tab labeled Learning Resources (ELR). Click on it and scroll down to your subject area or subject that you teach and chose your  resource based on criteria such as area of interest, grade level, type of resource: software, video, etc.

Creating a Database

Database Form

Databases  are robust applications that can acomodate almost any type of data. Fields describes the type of data that it will hold.  Records is the information contained in each field and, a table, is a combination of fields and records.  Forms are the interactive representation of the table.  It is what the end-user will manipulate.  Forms can also be printed out to keep a physical copy for whatever purpose may be.   queries are practically segments of information from tables that you intentionally pick for what ever  reason. Pick for instance, name of students and grade level;  merge into one query.  Printout and ready to use.

Creating a Separate Blog Page.

Pages

Creating a separate blog page makes the blog look more professional looking in the sense that it mimics a professional website created with tools such as Dream weaver.  Also, blog pages can be created to host different topics or themes.  One way to best exemplify this is by creating separate page for say Pre algebra, Algebra 1A, Geometry, etc.  Likewise, a main page can be created to represent math as the main subject and host sub pages containing math strands such as the ones mentioned earlier:  Algebra, etc.  Pages can also be organized however you may want to, but spaces must be left in between to accommodate sub pages.

Powerpoint Presentations

Presentation

Powerpoint  is an invaluable tool not only in the private sector but also in the classroom.  Powerpoint presentations enhance the capacity to convey ideas using visuals, audio, animations, text, etc. in a rather user-friendly way compared to the traditional way.  Powerpoint has several features that every user must learn to use.  These features are rather easy to find and use, particularly with the guidance of an experienced user.  Powerpoint allows the user to create layouts, apply ready to use templates, can find and incorporate clip art from the computer drives, removable devices, internet, or database pictures stored withing Powerpoint.  Other features include slide transitions which allows slides to have different transition effects and sounds.  It can, for instance, create camera transition on each slide, and automatic timing.  One can also customize animation in a slide: it could either be a picture/pictures, text, etc.  In sum, there are endless features in the form of user-friendly tabs, logos, and icons to allow the novice user create powerful Powerpoint presentations with very little effort.

Tagging and Categorizing Posts

Tags

When using tags, you are practically using the same label  for specific postings. For instance Joan Didion could tagged short sories.  On the other hand Categories contain subcategories that may be different but related.  For instance, you can have a category of Math followed by Algebra, Geometry, Arithmetic, etc. In other words, a category holds a tag that shares posts with similar attributes.