Blogs in Education

Using Yahoo, Dogpile and AskJeeves, I ran a search for Educational Blogs. The results that I found were all very similar regardless of which search engine. Most of the pages that popped up were the most popular Educational Blogs that are visited on the web, so it would make sense that they are commonly pulled up on these multiple search engines.
Today, blogs are being used for students, teachers and other educators to be able to interact with one another and better their own education and the education of their students. Teachers are able to communicate with other teachers in order to develop better lesson plans and learn from one another’s teaching methods. Also, students are able to access the educational blogs to further their education and get a better understanding of topics or lessons they are working on. The blogs offer information, exercises and strategies which may help students who are struggling to get a better understanding of the tasks they are asked to perform. Blogs are also resourceful to parents in similar ways that they are for students. Parents looking for tools and resources to further help their children’s learning are able to access these educational blogs and communicate with teachers and other parents and students who have experience with similar things.
RSS readers and aggregators are resources that sort information scanned and contained in multiple sites at once. They can sort the sites and resources found by title, brief description or by a combination of the two. I think that I would probable use both, but I like the way that aggregators sort the findings into a time-ordered list.

WebQuests

Webquests will be a very helpful tool when it comes to teaching and planning my own lessons. Before this class, I had not heard of them and would never have thought to use something like this in my classroom. I really liked the fact that it is avaliable all over the world, that way students are getting a more universal and equivalent education. I also liked how teachers are able to alter existing lesson plans and adapt them into their own unit and to fit their class. This will be a very nice resource when we are busy learning the ropes of the classroom and planning our own units. One thought that I had for a webquest would be in the area of social studies. You could use a webquest to teach students about their own state or to help them learn about the fifty states.

Gardners Theory of Multiple Intelligences in Technology

Technology has no doubt become an important tool in todays world. We use computers and the internet daily for both educational and communication related purposes. Though computers are used for a variety of purposes, their importance in the classroom is becomming more and more important. Technology is supported by many of Gardner's multiple intelligences and has become an essential learning tool for many students.

Verbal-linguistic intelligence is enhanced though the new and publications that are posted everyday around the world. Similar to how once newspapers increased ones knowledge of the world as well as their vocabulary, computers now do that too.

Science and math can be made colorful and interactive on the internet. Games are created to assist children in these subject areas that are as fun as their video games at home, but that serve an important educational role. Making these more challenging subjects fun by turning them into interactive games demonstrates the mathematical-logical intelligence.

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligance is supported in technology in the way that games such as tetris and "pong" require some motor skill and ability to react quickly to the game. Also, science websites where you can "create" simple machines online and see how they work is also kinsethetic.

Students in todays generation have grown up with television being a major part of their daily lives. Because of this, students have become very visual learners, learning best from video, slides and powerpoint presentations. Techology allows for many different types of visual stimulation to occur in the classroom from a slide show to the cameras that can display printed images and reflect them onto the screen for everyone to see.

As you can see, technology is an essential educational tool and multiple intellegences are supported and developed through its use.