Lesson Plan Lingo

This past week in my IT 486 class, we discussed the creation of lesson plans. I realize that these are important to class organization for teachers, but some things are just overdone. I feel that the outline we were given asked for some things a few times too many, and other things didn't feel like they had a place. I believe that every teacher needs to have their own lesson plan outline that fits their style and can easily be adjusted based on subject or grade level. Despite the problems I felt our outline had, I did find that having the skeleton saved to a word processor with links to state standard lists and other useful information is a good idea that I might use in the future. I just wish that our state and school administrations were more often concerned with helping our students learn, instead of tests and making teachers come up with sometimes pointless technical lingo.

The Reality of Filamentaliy

In my IT486 class, we recently had to create an educational tool/activity using a program/site called Filamentality. I must say that it was confusing at first, but after a few minutes of frustration, I was able to get the hang of it. Once I did, it seemed to be quite simple, and when I had made my activity, I was quite impressed. I really can see this as being a useful tool in a future classroom of mine. Students nowadays basically live on computers, so this would be a great way to teach while getting them entranced with the subject (in this case sharks). It's simple, it's fun, and it's...EDUCATIONAL. Hooray for technology!

If your curious about the types of things you can create using this site, here is my little activity that I made. It only took a small amount of time, and it's still pretty cool if you ask me.

Blog and Wiki Power Up!

I'm starting to get the hang of this blog thing. I'm also beginning to become more comfortable with my wiki. Right now, I think my biggest problem is having to use a MAC in this classroom. I'm a PC guy and this is much different. I hope to be getting more and more involved with my blog and hopefully my wiki too.

Google Docs Rocks

I must say that I was surprised at how well google docs worked. It was very useful for collaborating with others on a project because several people could be editing at once. This let us all work on different parts and get it all done on the same file at the same time. Then we could discuss afterwards. The force is definitely with google docs.

Jonathan Smith's IT 486 Blog Power

This is going to be my blog for my technical journey through IT 486. Let's see how well this goes. I always have a hard time keeping up with these things.