Lesson Plan

During this week, we learned about lesson plans. In my previous education courses, I learned that planning is essential for effective and efficient instruction. Therefore, I think that learning about lesson planning is very beneficial for a future teacher, as myself. In this way, I’m always interested in learning about designing lesson plans, especially when this includes actual practice. Therefore, working on the design of a lesson plan during this week was of particular interest and excitement for me, especially because our lesson included the incorporation of technology. After designing this lesson plan, I know I’m definitely going to incorporate technology in my planning and therefore in my instruction when I start teaching. As I already said before, I really believe that technology can make a difference in the classroom; that is, technology can greatly help improve instruction and learning. In this way, I think that planning that incorporates technology is one of the tools that will help me be an effective and efficient teacher.

Wordle and Twitter

During this week, we learned about Wordle and Twitter, which were Web 2.0 tools totally new to me. Before this week, I didn’t know anything about these tools, except that Twitter exists. Because I heard many people talking about Twitter, I always said that I was going to sign in and join Twitter “world.” However, for one reason or another, I never did. In this way, at the beginning, just after we were taught in our class how to use these tools, I couldn’t think in a use for these Web 2.0 tools in the math classroom. Nevertheless, after trying them for a while, I came out with some ideas. I think Wordle would be useful in my math classroom in helping students get familiar with important math words or vocabulary. For example, I could provide my students with a list of the vocabulary they need to know or be familiar with for a certain lesson or unit and ask them to play around with these words in Wordle. To make this activity more effective, I could repeat the words in the list according to the importance of each word for the lesson or unit at hand. Learning mathematics without the appropriate math vocabulary is sometimes extremely difficult. Therefore, I strongly believe this activity would be an effective and fun way to help students get familiar with the vocabulary they need for each lesson or unit. Now, outside the classroom, I think Twitter would be a very helpful tool to keep students updated on class announcements, homework, and websites, which the teacher considers helpful and appropriate to use for a specific assignment, unit, or the entire course.

WebQuests

At first, I thought that WebQuests were a good tool to use in the classroom. Now, because of what I have learned about WebQuests during this week, I think they are one the best web 2.0 tools a teacher can use in the classroom. The WebQuest I found for our today’s activity allows students to work in groups and learn about basic geometric shapes and their real world applications. In this site, the project is to look around our world for geometrical shapes; that is, students will look for examples of Geometry in nature, art, architecture, and fashion. The site provides students with a list of websites where they will search for the figures and asks them to write down the name of each shape, number of dimensions, where it is found, and how it was used. Then, the students will search the internet for more examples of geometric shapes, which appear in other areas of our life such as sports, science, and transportation. Finally, the students will present their findings using Power point. A WebQuest like this would allow my students to explore the nature of basic geometric shapes and their real world applications, which students miss most of the time. Moreover, I could use this WebQuest for almost any geometry course, up to high school level, to make the learning of geometric shapes fun and efficient. I could also use this WebQuest in other math courses to expose students to some of the applications of mathematics in the real world.

I’m definitely going to use Webquests as one of my teaching tools, in and outside the classroom. Moreover, I already have some great ideas to create some of the best math WebQuests ever!!! The WebQuest I used for our activity in our today’s class, “The Shapes in our Lives”, and other WebQuest I found about Pythagoras and the Pythagoras Theorem inspired me to create and use WebQuests in my future classroom. I believe that a great part of mathematics can be learned in a fun way; so, I’m always looking for tools to teach mathematics in ways that students like learning this subject. In this way, WebQuests will be one of these tools. Now, I, myself, enjoy learning trough WebQuests. For example, this was the case in our WebQuest about WebQuest activity.

What a week!!!

This week has been incredible for me!! I was supposed to fly and get to El Paso, Texas last Tuesday, and then come back Today, Thursday. However, this was impossible because of the awful weather in Dallas. After waiting for about 7 hours in the airport, I was able to fly to Dallas. Next, all the flights from Dallas to El Paso cancelled for that day, so I had to spend the night there in the airport. Then, on Wednesday, due to the bad weather, but now in El Paso, all the flights to El Paso cancelled again. So, I tried to come back to Knoxville as soon as I find out that I wasn’t going to be able to get to El Paso (and Ciudad Juarez) as I was supposed to. However, the weather in Dallas was still terrible, so I wasn’t able to fly back to Knoxville. Everything was crazy in Dallas!!! I just wanted get out from there! So, I requested to fly to Nashville and this worked out pretty well compared to what had already happed. I arrived to Nashville at 9:00pm and got home at 2:00am on Thursday. Now, because I was not able to get on time to my appoint in Ciudad Juarez, I came back earlier which allowed me make it to my TPTE 486 class today, Thursday. So, the only good thing for me of all that much snow in Dallas is that I only missed two days of classes instead of three or more