Thing #4--Searching the Web

For this excercise, we were shown several different search engines like webcrawler.com, ask.com, and google.com. It was a great refresher course for me because I had totally forgotten about a few of them. Webcrawler used to be one of my favorite search engines long before Google was out on the market and I forgot how easy it is to use them. But more importantly that Webcrawler is a "metacrawler" or a meta search engine, which means it looks at three or four search engines instead of just one at a time. It then pulls the best info from those sites and gives you the top of the top of the lists.

So how do I plan to use this in the classroom? I am going to start showing the kids how to use the various search engines and their purposes along with teaching them how to use them wisely, especially the younger kids. I would hate for inappropriate material to come up in our Christian School setting.

One of the other tools I plan to use is to develop a web search exercise where they will have to use the various search engines to see how they work and what is the same and different about each one of them. This is a great way to rethink how we use the web!

Thing #3, iGoogle Suite

Well, this is now my third thing to complete. I am really glad I have been doing the Clovis 23 things challenge this year. I have been learning a lot already about rethinking my teaching strategies for Computers and the classroom. I have students one day a week, but with this setup, I could teach my students 24/7/365.

The iGoogle suite has been very informative. I have already been "playing" with some of the materials, such as this blog and a few others I use, but not in the way that is being suggested here. I never thought of having the students create their own, iGoogle account in order to follow blogs, or share calendars, or other neat tools. I have seen the collaborative tools for the Google Docs before, but now I'm thinking that might just be a better way to do some things.

I have already sent this course info on to a few colleagues so it will be interesting to see how they respond. It would be great to have some of this in place by this fall, or at least start working with it. I have been reluctant to require the students to have an e-mail for several reasons, but I think I may be seeing the true benefits of this along with a personal iGoogle start page. Only time will tell.

Thing #2 My ??? Blog?

Okay, so this was suppose to be my first blog, but that really isn't the truth. I have already been blogging for well over a year or two now. My wife and I post blogs on a pretty regular basis and certainly follow others as a way to stay in touch with friends and families. It is a great tool especially when some of your family is living in Bangladseh.

So far, this has been pretty introductory of some sorts but the rest of the course looks really cool. I have already learned how to create an Avatar for myself and a few other things. I am an online teacher of Latin through Sevenstar Academy and I teach computers at my local Christian school. So the things I am learning through this program are a way to help me learn how to be a better teacher.

Thing #1

I recently signed up to learn more about WEB2.0 tools that are available as a teacher. This sounds like a really fun tool to learn new things to teach my students. Seeing as how I haven't been using my blog for several long months, I thought I would start with this one and see how things go from here. I am looking forward to this fun innovative adventure. The following link will take you back to the main website that this is based off.

http://clovis23things.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/register/



Above is one of the Avatars I created to represent myself as a Latin Teacher.

Already this is a pretty cool site.