The Technophile: WebQuest

WebQuest	Strengths	Weaknesses
Grow School Greens	Green coloring of the page, Animated semi-truck.	Needs more simple information, needs more bullets to organize information.
Where is My Hero?	Good page color, simplistic overview of page.	Needs animation, needs something to really jump out off the page.
Underground Railroad	Simplistic homepage, emotional picture to show hardships.	None observed
Ice Cream	None observed	Page color could use changing, animation would help, ice cream could be more realistic.
Ancient Egypt	None	Needs something to catch attention, no color, black font with white background, nothing standing out for the reader to want to see.

1.) In my personal opinion i think the Grow School Greens and The Underground Railroad. I liked both of these sites because the images were either emotionally catching or eye catching animation. The material was easy to read and the bullets made it nice to organise and work through this project with time efficiency

2.) I think two worse websites would have to be the Ancient Egypt and The Ice Cream. The Ice Cream website did not supply the students with the scientific knowledge that i feel should be there. The Egyptian website was dull and boring. No eye catching animations or catchy colors.

3.) Best and worst means to me that it will catch the students attention and that they will want to do the project! They will want to learn and have fun while doing so.

Double Journal Entry

Quote: Lucas habitually dresses in jeans, sneakers, and work shirts -- a man looking like there is much work to be done. For the American educational system, he says, that work must begin now.

Response: The American educational system does have some ancient learning styles. I agree with George Lucas on this topic very much indeed. He makes some good suggestions when he discusses in his article of how to bring these lessons to the classroom. By incorporating a circle of communication, starting with music and painting, to the written communication and spoken communication, and end up with math which is the most precise of all. This will allow the student to learn more effectively. He brings to the table an idea of making a per4son excited by using the color red, or using a diagonal line, but if wanting to make a person calm you would use a straight line or a calmer color other than red, such as purple. George states that we as a nation want to spend most of our money towards our military rather than spending on education. He says “It's not a great idea to want to take over the world if you don't know what to do with it and how to run it. Nothing is accomplished through conquest. Everything is accomplished through education.”

Reference: Daly, James. "Life on the Screen: Visual Literacy in Education." Edutopia Sept. (2004). Web. 13 Nov. 2011. <http://www.edutopia.org/lucas-visual-literacy>. ;

3 Pictures

Double Journal Entry #11

Summarize: Governor of Illionois is accepting the law to make all sex offenders to be banned from social networking sites, such as Facebook. The writer of this article, Larry Magid, does not condon sex offenders, but makes valid points in why this law should not be passed. Larry goes on to say state many factual statistics that show that the people who have not been caught yet are far far more dangerous than those that have been caught already and put on the registered sex offenders list. He also goes to show that sexualy exploiting of teenagers on social networking sites is blown outof porportion. That only eight girls in four years have been harmed while 9,934 children were sexually abused in a single year in PA.

Evidence: Larry Magid shows many factual statistics to support his arguement throughout the article.
My opinion: I believe Mr Magid has a very strong arguement. After reading this article not only do i believe this law should not be passed, but i believe the governor should be using the time spent on this subject on approving a law that addresses a abetter subject than this. Im not saying that this subject isnt a bad one, but there are other subjects in this country that affect more peoples lives everyday than this one.

Wikipedia Article: Baseball

This article or section has multiple issues.	No
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.	Yes
The neutrality of this article is disputed.	No
The factual accuracy of this article is disputed.	No
This needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling.	No
This may contain material not appropriate for an encyclopedia.	No
This article only describes one highly specialized aspect of its associated subject.	Yes
This article requires authentication or verification by an expert.	Yes
This article or section needs to be updated.	No
This article may not provide balanced geographical coverage on a region.	No
This is missing citations or needs footnotes.	No
This article does not cite any references or sources.	No

2. Read through the article and see if it meets the following requirements:

Is it written in a clear and organized way?	Yes
Is the tone neutral (not taking sides)?	Yes
Are all important facts referenced (you're told where they come from)?	Yes
Does the information provided seem complete or does it look like there are gaps (or just one side of the story)?	Complete

Wikipedia Friend Not Foe

1.  Did the class activity about Wikipedia and this article change your opinion about the value of Wikipedia to society in general and education specifically? Yes, I have been told that Wikipedia is almost the devil of websites. Making it sound as if this website is almost only full of bad information. But, look further into the subject it is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. I would use Wikipedia as a website to get some of my information, but i would look to see if the information was correct or not by using another website.

2.  Describe how you might direct students to use Wikipedia in your future classroom? I would instruct my students to use the website just as a staple. For example to fin information to start a project off with. Sort of like a Boost to get their project started. Then allow them to use credible sources to site in the projects bibliography.

Wikipedia questions

a. What is Wikipedia? A site to give information about almost any topic.

b. How would you answer the question posed in this piece “How reliable can a source be when anyone can edit it?” It can not be as reliable as any other website that can not be edited by just one editor.

c. Who do the creators of Wikipedia place their trust in when it comes to weeding out misinformation? They rely on each other. They rely on experts to put in the right information

d. Why did founder Larry Sanger leave Wikipedia? He left due to the governance and credibility of the Wikipedia website

e. What would abuse or vandalism look like on a Wikipedia page? There is no sources to their information.

f. What do the statistics quoted in the third paragraph of this piece reveal? There are over 2 million articles on Wikipedia today and in 280 different languages. Wikipedia is on the top 10 most-visited sites on the Internet around the world and Google searches list Wikipedia entries on almost every search.

g. Why do you think Wikipedia is so successful? Because almost every google search has a wikipedia article.

h. Why might Wikipedia’s creators not want to accept advertising? Because it relies on donations instead of advertising

i. How does Wikiscanner help increase the reliability of Wikipedia entries? It scans the IP address to see if the information can be reliable.

Think Aloud

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