Thursday, February 17, 2011
By the way...
The Rock star project we had to do where we essentially completed, yet another, webquest through the eyes of a student... was definitely busy work and not essential nor did it further my understanding in anyway.
Wordle
So, in class on February 15th, we learned about a tool called wordle. Oh my, I am a fan. Not only is the interface really simply and easy to use, but I just love what it does. By putting in a body of text, it will create what is essentially word art that emphasizes the words that are most used by making them the largest. I think this would be a really fun thing to use in the classroom so children can see if they over use any words in their papers or possibly for stories to help find some of the central ideas by seeing what words are used most. Basically, I am a fan and will definitely add this tool to my teaching repertoire.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Evaluating a Website
The website I choice to evaluate was: Wikipedia.org
I choice to evaluate this website because in high school it was always frustrating and confusing to me as to why the librarians always said Wikipedia was not a reliable source. Yet, we had always learned that websites with ".org" were reliable ones to use. Why is Wikipedia the exception when it's so useful?
After reviewing, I see the potential for harm of the website. Although information is usually accurate and useful, it can never be 100% reliable because anyone and everyone can edit, add, or change information. For example, the article on "racism" had the following flags: "The verifiability of all or part of this article is disputed" and "The neutrality of this article is disputed." Thus, especially under such heated topics that people's opinions often differ, the website could be subject to bias and inaccurate information.
It was really helpful to me to be able to see the things that are necessary to look for in checking the validity such as author being identified, date of last edit to make information current, all pictures having alternative text to assist special learners, and how familiar you are with the organization that publishes this site. I think it's very useful to think critically about the websites both you use and ones the children might be using.
I choice to evaluate this website because in high school it was always frustrating and confusing to me as to why the librarians always said Wikipedia was not a reliable source. Yet, we had always learned that websites with ".org" were reliable ones to use. Why is Wikipedia the exception when it's so useful?
After reviewing, I see the potential for harm of the website. Although information is usually accurate and useful, it can never be 100% reliable because anyone and everyone can edit, add, or change information. For example, the article on "racism" had the following flags: "The verifiability of all or part of this article is disputed" and "The neutrality of this article is disputed." Thus, especially under such heated topics that people's opinions often differ, the website could be subject to bias and inaccurate information.
It was really helpful to me to be able to see the things that are necessary to look for in checking the validity such as author being identified, date of last edit to make information current, all pictures having alternative text to assist special learners, and how familiar you are with the organization that publishes this site. I think it's very useful to think critically about the websites both you use and ones the children might be using.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)