Digital Badge #L- Chapter 6

There are so many wonderful educational websites and apps that allow teachers to foster online learning. In todays digital world the library for applications that can assist a student in their education seems to be endless. Go to the app store on your phone and type in "education" and thousands of search results come up. Same can go for educational websites, any search engine will open the door to thousands of hits that can assist you in your lesson planning. There are many wonderful tools to be used at your disposal. One of which is Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking expands the concept of bookmarking from one user at one computer to a community of users on many computers. Instead of a private resource library that can be viewed by one person social bookmarks create a public list that can be by many readers. This can allow teachers to set up bookmarks she finds educational for all of her students to utilize. It allows new ways to sort and search all kinds of information.

Another cool tool is Information Alerts. Information alerts are electronic notices that new information about a topic has just become available in some electronic publication format. Information alerts allow busy teachers a convenient way to notify all students that new information about a certain topic area has just become available online. Google alerts, which is free, is one of the many options for this particular tool. You enter a keyword and Google search automatically sends you an email whenever there are new result for your term. I think this is really neat because if you are working a particularly time consuming lesson plan for your class this can help the students with their research as well as the teacher. Google Alerts can be a time saver because instead of searching for yourself Google Alerts will do it for you, generating 5 types of alerts

1. New
2. Video
3. Blog
4. Discussion
5. Book

So not only does it help you manage your time, its gives a variety of sources for your topic.

Credit to: cambodia4kidsorg at Flickr

Another tool that I had personal experience with this week is the creation of your very own WebQuest. I personally had a lot of fun creating my web quest, this tool allows educators to get really creative with their lessons. You can ask students to go on an adventure, whether it be virtual or somewhere they physically have to go. You can ask students to create diaries, whether they are video or hand written. The web quests really allow you to go above and beyond and break the limitations of a boring old assignment. There are thousands of links and other resources that can hep you beef up your web quest and make it more interactive for the students. There are 5 steps to creating a successful web quest:

• Stage setting
• Task
• Process
• Evaluation
• Conclusion

This type of lesson planning lays out exactly what you want the student to complete and how they will be graded on it. This helps lead the student to success in whatever the task you assign may be. There is little room for misunderstanding or confusion, unless you don't know how to write a step by step activity. I actually had a lot of fun creating my web quest because it was an assignment I would have personally loved to have in high school on a topic I think most kids find interesting. 

Resources:

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.