Comments on: What We Want Isn’t Out There

By: Greg Wimmer

Greg Wimmer — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:59:47 +0000

As an educator who is always trying to find new sites to implement (and not always following through on that endeavor), I’ve found that there are a lot of sites out there that do a whole lot of nothing. Two Web 2.0 sites that I use religiously, however, are Edmodo and Etherpad. Edmodo extends the classroom beyond the four walls by allowing students to microblog and affords me an opportunity to respond (among other things). Etherpad is a text editor that allows for instant editing for a small group of individuals. And while both have small drawbacks, I’ve found that they’ve truly helped in creating a “more perfect classroom.” If only there was a way that we could connect educators to developers to collaborate on sites that would be helpful in facilitating classroom interactions and supplement teaching more effectively.

By: Fran

Fran — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:01:57 +0000

I’m glad I teach physics! The PhET website is fantastic for physics (it also has some chemistry and other science stuff) and sometimes I assign kids a simulation with some open-ended questions, and they can try out stuff that we just can’t do in lab!
I agree with Nick about YouTube, too. YouTube user Kokpin revolutionized my index of refraction lab, by showing what you should be looking for as you do the lab, and how to look through the glass and not the air. Now it seriously takes half the time it used to to do the lab AND a higher percentage of kids actually manage to SEE the results. I used to have a lot of puzzled and frustrated kids because I couldn’t make them see through my eyes!

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:57:23 +0000

I'll take a stab at offering one good resource as a box for a bunch. Youtube. It expands. There are billions of videos there. They're organized by user, so if you find somebody you like, you can see everything else. This is a tiny little nitch. But especially for older students, I showed a class yesterday how to youtube search for "solving quadratic equations by graphing" and then last night a student reported getter herself unstuck by finding a great youtube video. That's maybe an embarrassing story for my teaching, but I was impressed with the fact that she used youtube to learn a skill on her own.

By: Claire Thompson

Claire Thompson — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:14:56 +0000

Dan, you and Todd have articulated really well a key part of good teaching. Most good teachers are not willing to use things right out of the box. Be it a textbook, website, or cool teaching package with nifty matching binders… When I started my first teaching gig bG (before Google) my predecessor left me all of his notes, worksheets, tests etc. It was wonderful. But as I went through them I realized that my take on teaching the subject was different. Some of the stuff I used as is, some I modified, and most of it I didn’t use at all. Just like our students need to feel ownership of their learning, we need to feel ownership of our teaching. We also need to make sure that our lessons address the needs of the kids in our classrooms.
Cheers!