Thoughts on IWB

   When you first introduced us to the interactive white board I was amazed and impressed with how technology has evolved sense I've been in school. When I was reading the article, I agreed that the teachers that have them (to my knowledge) do not get training on how to use them properly and are not shown their full potential. The article stated that most teachers use them as a black board or to just project the topic at hand. In the school I teach there very few teachers that have theses interactive white boards.  I observed one teacher's class during this semester and she used it in a very basic manner because she doesn't know how else to use it. This is an example of what I have witnessed from the article discussing the use of IWB in class. The article also says that schools should provide training on these boards, but they don't.  To my knowledge, schools are not willing to pay for workshops or for a presenter to come and demonstrate how to use these when there are so many budget cuts going on. So, I don't see the point on having them at this point. My school isn't going to purchase anymore because of fund issues and budget cuts. Some teachers where I work even have old school chalk boards which I love to see those still around. So, my honest opinion on these boards goes along with the article, that having these boards doesn't prove that students learn better, or there are no statistics yet stating that these boards help increase knowledge of the topic at hand, or they are the reason for higher grades. Therefore my thoughts are, why do we need to know how to use them if our schools can't even afford to purchase them for teachers let along provide training. I do think they are cool and super interesting though! I would love to have one in my class but I know it wont ever happen. This tool in my opinion, is a great attention getter and a good motivational tool for the class to be actively engaged. It is also wonderful to be on the cutting edge of technology with this next generation of children, but if there is no training and no way of purchasing at this time, and especially if test results do not show that having these boards are directly related to higher test scores I don't see how teacher can benefit at this moment. They will just use them as a regular board instead just like the teachers in my building.

Blog evaluation

My blog that I read about was called Fun for Spanish Teachers. This was an attractive blog from a teacher that made teaching look easy and fun. This is what her link looks like http://funforspanishteachers.blogspot.com/

This blog was cool because she has links to a variety of ideas for your classroom to even workshops you can attend. I am always looking for teacher input on every aspect of the classroom from lesson planning, games to teach by, songs, culture, and just all around experiences on what has worked and what hasn't worked with teachers. She is a teacher that travels from class to class and doesn't have a class of her own so she had to think outside of the box on what she can carry around with her to help with classroom management. One item she carries wither her is a chime. She dings this chime to quiet the class when it gets too loud instead of raising her voice.

She also has ideas in her link to Culture Corner which is my favorite topic. One idea that I liked and can relate to personally because I grew up doing the same thing is the 12 grapes activity. Every year at New Years you take 12 grapes at the strike of midnight and you make a wish with each grape that you would like do during the new year. I even downloaded this activity to try with my class during this time of year. She also posted some neat videos about culture and how other Hispanic countries celebrate holidays! I loved this and I would love to share these videos with all my classes. In my opinion, I think the culture aspect of learning another language sticks with the students more.

This blog also has links to free teaching resources which you can find an abundance of worksheet to handouts and she also has links to be able to purchase books or activities that other teachers have created! She called it teachers paying teachers.

She also has songs you can purchase through i-tunes and she gives the option to download the lyrics. I liked that fact that you can get the lyrics as well. I play a ton of songs in my class and I think we learn better through song. You can never have enough songs to teach your material in my opinion! Overall I enjoyed this blog and I would recommend it to my fellow Spanish teachers! You can never get enough ideas on topics to make teaching fun and interesting! 






  

Web Evaluation

This was an interesting activity and one that I have been interested in finding out how to do. I have always wondered how to be sure of good reliable websites. My website is called Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators www.schrockguide.net. It is about how to use technology in the classroom.
I would recommend this website to anyone who is interested in this topic of how to integrate technology in your classroom. This person, Kathy offers her services to the community to educate teachers and anyone else interested in using technology in their classes. She offers anything from workshops where you can come and listen with others,or she offers her service to come to your school.
I recommend this website because during the task of evaluating this site, it met most of the requirements on being a reliable website. It was very professional and also included pictures of Ms. Kathy and she provided a link for anyone who is interested in obtaining her services. Another reason this site appears to be reliable is because one of the questions from the task was to see if the author's qualifications suggest that he/she is an authority on the subject and the answer to this is clearly yes. If you go to this site you will find links to a tremendous amount of articles and books she has published along with her full resume.  This makes me feel more confident that she is not only knowledgeable, but this site also gives me a good feeling that this site is reliable if I can go to the link and see what all she has published. Also, you did not need to download anything to view this site. No special browser or plug ins needed and this site is free to view.  It was very easy to navigate around and that is especially important for someone like me with limited technology experience.
The only things that I had trouble with was finding when the site was last updated. I could see that she had posted an award from this year but I couldn't see that the actual website was updated nor could I find the copyright. I also couldn't figure out who the actual author was. Clearly the website was talking about Kathy, but it was not written in the first person format.
Overall, this website seems very reliable and usable. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested.