Week Six post

Last summer, my family went to the Hula Valley nature reserve. After going through the exhibits, everyone went into a room where there was a quiz on the information in the exhibits. Each seat had a device to enter the answers to multiple choice questions, and the winners were announced at the end (alas, no prizes). Lisa Nielsen has a post http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.co.il/2013/03/6-free-ways-to-capture-student.html#more on variations of this theme for the classroom. She is not talking about expensive systems that come with their own hardware, rather ways of making use of existing tech (including smartphones and even "dumbphones" to accomplish similar things. There are a few good ideas there. One idea is to use texting for quick quizzes in the classroom. Say, they read a text, the teacher reads out multiple choice (or short answer) questions, and the students text them in to the teacher. This saves time over handing out and collecting quiz sheets, and can give the teacher instant feedback on what is or is not being learned. One could also use a GoogleDoc, but this does not require advance planning.

"Technology won't replace teachers, but teachers who use technology will probably replace teachers who don't". So says somebody at a conference attended by Steve Wheeler (http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.il/2013/03/technology-wont-replace-teachers-but.html). The truth of this statement obviously depends on a few subfactors, such as subject being taught and orientation of the school, but the essential point is that in an increasingly technological world, a tech literate teacher has a clear advantage, all other things being equal, over a technophobe. The key phrase, however, is "all other things being equal". So, with all that we are gaining from the course, let us remember that the tech skills are just tools towards a higher goal, and not the goal in and of itself.

The third thing I want to write about is a quick review of the spelling games from this week's unit. The Funbrain was a cute idea, having you check of the wrong spelling out of four words, and then giving the correct spelling for that word. The problem was that being that it was a wrong spelling, you don't really know what the correct spelling is! For example,  one of the "wrong" words I had was "pairt". So, what do you do to correct it? Part? Paint? Pair? Anyway, I wrote "paint" and got it wrong (they wanted "pair"). The point is, check out the game before using it. Just because it is on the internet does not mean it is perfect.
The next site was kidspell. Here, there are a bunch of game choices, based on level. The good thing here is that it allows you to build your own spelling list to make the games. Some of the games played smoother than others, and difficulty levels can be adjusted.
The one I liked the best was the eduplace site. There was a great game, matching halves of words on a square chart (about 15 words). It seems that the site is tied to a specific textbook series, so it may be less helpful.
By the way, with all spelling sites, make sure you check if it is U.S. spelling or British; there are many differences!