Technolgy Articles

Tool #1
Okay so I decided that it would be fun to teach my students about astronomy. I took an astronomy class in college and we used a tool were you could look at the stars even in the day. I found a similar tool on the Hayden Planetarium website. There you can download a tool where it gives you lessons to teach in class depending on what age group. This way your students can explore the digital universe. You can see the positions of the stars anytime of the day, anywhere in the world.
My students can explore the nearby stars, star clusters, nebulae, extrasolar planets, nearby galaxy clusters, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and much more. They can see the night sky as it appears across the spectrum, from radio and infrared, to visible, and even in Gamma rays. This gives the students something they could never see by just going outside at night.
I think is an excellent tool to use in class because it will help my students and your children to fully understand what they are looking at when they look up at the stars at night. The universe can tell us a lot about the world. It teaches us about gravity, position of the world, the seasons of the year, the phases of the moon, and much more. I know that this program is very advanced and it might be too much and too hard to understand. This program is more appropriate for a higher age group but I think even the younger grades can find more understanding with this program.
I think this tool can be used to teach many different subjects like, math, science, even history. We can learn about different ancient cultures like the Greeks and how the stars meant to them. I can teach about mythology and how the Greeks labeled the stars. I think that a lot can be learned by the universe and I hope by the use of this tool my students will learn more as well. I think it is great that technology has given us the tools to teach our students something we would have never been able to do before at least not in this dept.Check out this tool at http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/universe/

Tool #2
This next tool might be a bit controversial, one would say that it was more of a game. I think it is a great way to teach students disguised as a game. It's called the CivWorld. This is a game where you can pick which century you would like to play in. It teaches it's players advanced terminology, knowledge of geography, or even principles of history.
While playing this game it takes students back in time. It plays scenarios in the history depending on which time period you pick. For example say you pick the Dawn of Civilization 4000 B.C-1 A.D. In this scenario you will see and create a stable civilization for them. You will learn about geographic map of this time period, certain civilizations like the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, Medes, Phoenicians, Sumerians, and most importantly how they survived in that time period. How they hunted and farmed.
The greatest part of this game is you are not just watch how something came to be like a movie you are experiencing and what is more you are learning while you do it. There are many more time periods to experience as well. You can play this game with multiple players and you can play it in the comfort of your own home as well as school. Parents can watch their kids play at home and even join in with them to see that their child is learning.
There are a lot of cons to this tool too though. It is very time consuming, to complete a civilization takes 2 hours. It takes up a lot of space on your computer. Although you can try some time periods for free, some do cost money. I haven't been able to tell how factual the game is. It requires no teaching from me, the teacher although you could expound on what was played and make sure they learn actual facts. Another factor is difficulty. This game is probably only suited for an older age group.
I think that a lot could be gained by using this tool every once in a while even it is just to get the students excited about learning history. I know as a kid I learned things a lot better when I could experience things first hand and this gives my students a way to do that. You can fine this tool at http://civworld.gameslearningsociety.org/index.php

Video Reflection
This weeks video was introducing web 2.0, the digit sandbox. What that it does is allow users to collaborate tools together. As a teacher this will be extreme useful because we need as many technological tools as we can so that the student can understand the concept fully. This video goes through several of this tools like blogging and google. They believe that because technology is what is today that more difficult and powerful questions are being asked so we need to collaborate our efforts to answer them. See this video at http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=11669