Response to "Week 2 Ch. 5: Explore and Explain"

Week 2 Ch. 5: EXPLORE and EXPLAIN:

 

On page 143, Chapter 5 offered some links to a variety of software tools with potential value for instruction. I'm going to just share some thoughts on a few that stood out to me and that I thought would be personally useful to me. A few I'm ignoring in the post simply because they don't fit my style or my content. 

I really liked Discovery's puzzlemaker. That seemed like something I could see myself using in the classroom. There are a variety of different puzzles you can make for quick, simple review.

 

I would have to look more into Vocab Test and Engrade, but from my initial glimpse I could see myself using these as well for assessment. I like Engrade's philosophy of assessment, which focuses on growth and summative assessment.  

 

As for Wikipedia, I'm a huge fan. I think Wikipedia gets a harsher rap than it deserves. I would genuinely encourage students to use Wikipedia. It's a great starting source. I would teach them to be critical users of it, however. Just like any encyclopedia (even the old fashioned physical textbook versions), Wikipedia has the potential for flaws because human beings have made it and humans are flawed. The important thing is to pay attention to each page's citations. Those citations and accompanying links can be an incredible starting place for research. Wikipedia should, of course, be paired with additional resources, but it has tremendous value. 

 

The U.S. Census Bureau could also be a useful resource for research. Again, you would need to teach students how to navigate it. The initial link the textbook uses isn't the best designed in term of navigability.   

 

Golden Dict just seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth. There are plenty of solid dictionary and language sources. In fact, teaching students how to use search engines to look up definitions and meanings would probably be a better tactic. 

 

There are several other tools but I either didn't find them especially useful or worthwhile (some seem good in theory but are probably more trouble than they're worth), or they weren't intended for my content area, or they were dead links that didn't take you anywhere at all.