Assignment Five

I really like the idea of using a wiki in my classroom. I think that they are a great way to further anybody's knowledge about technology. I have found that they are very easy to work with. Since my major is in elementary education, I believe that I will be limited in what I can do with a wiki (especially if I am teaching a lower elementary grade). I believe that it will be difficult for young children to develop wikis. However, I will be able to develop wikis for them. I am really intrigued about the idea of using wikis for virtual field trips. I think that virtual field trips will be an excellent way to introduce new concepts to my students. In a world of ever increasing gas prices, the only way my students may get to go on field trips, is if they take a virtual one. I feel that I will have to research any wikis to find-out how well of a reference they are. I understand that several wikis are not very good references.

Assignment 6 (Online Game)

The online game I decided to use for assignment six was from www.funbrain.com. The title of the online game was "Where Is That?". When I first went to this website, I thought all of the games would be geared toward early elementary grades. However, the game I chose dealt with geography. I looked on the Alabama Learning Exchange and found the content covered in this game was on a seventh grade level. I found the game to be a challenge. Severeal times, I did not know the answers to the various questions. (I previously thought that I was well versed in the area of state/state capital geograhy.) I was able to play several rounds of this game in a short time period; this makes me think that students would lose interest quickly. I believe this online game should be one of many websites on geography available to the students. I played this game several times and I found it to only cover a handful of states and state capitals. This online game is not the most visually appealing, but it gets the job done. This is a great tool for students to gauge how well they know their geography.