This article was written by UC Berkley. A very well written article to refer to when trying to validate a webpage. One suggestion that this article suggested to use when trying to find the source, was to Truncate the url. This means that you get rid of most of the url, to help locate the main page. This site offered a lot of suggestions, many that we have learned in Dr. Christie's class. I think Nicole discussed the site, alexa.com, in one of her past blogs or maybe we discussed it as a reading group during class. This site would definitely be helpful when wanting to find out what other links connect to a site you are researching. I wonder what sites would link to our websites??
Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools
It is important that many web version articles show similarity to a print version. Some key differences that readers may notice would be color and graphics. Clearly it costs much less to have a web page in color rather than a printed page. This article specified 5 criteria to look for when evaluating web sites:
- Accuracy of Web Documents
- Authority of Web Documents
- Objectivity of Web Documents
- Currency of the Web Documents (is the site updated...do the links work?)
- Coverage of the Web Documents
Implementing the Standards into Projects by Rosemary Shaw
Rosemary is a huge advicate for project-based learning for a number of reasons. One of the reasons was that it provided an array of curriculum options. With high stakes testing and administrators breathing down our necks on increasing student achievement...there never seems to be enough time to get it all done! This is when it is really crucial for us (the educators) to familiarize ourselves with the standards in all areas of our grade, and see what standards may cross-so we can develop lessons that can "kill two birds with one stone". This article made me laugh when it gave suggestions on how to find our state's standards. If we are in the field of education and are able to take graduate courses, we better know how to find our state standards! Better yet-we better understand how to use them to help us create our lessons. Standards are the cornerstone of what we teach. I thought it was interesting that this article mentioned NAEP. My school was selected to take part in this testing this past year. I actually never knew what this test was till now (sad day for the teacher!). Not all of the kids in my grade level had to take the test. Students were randomly selected based on many different variables (ethnicity, gender, etc). I am not sure if we have access to those results yet, but now that I have a better understanding of what the test was assessing, I will keep my eyes peeled for the results. The light is almost bright!!
3 comments:
Standards are a part of what we do everyday. My district requires us to have the objective posted in front of the class, so that we can let the students know what they are expected to accomplish at the end of the lesson. I find this to be very helpful with students and keeping them on task.
I was relieved to hear someone mention the standards in regard to project based learning. I try not to be cynical when it comes to project based learning, because I really see the value in it, but I wonder how it's possible to get everything in. I already feel like I'm packing a whole bunch into a short year, and if I went to project based learning for everything, I don't know if it would fit. I suppose that would be my cue to take the time to develop these projects that could fit into a school year and still cover everything.
It's a sad world we live in when we KNOW that their are still teachers out there who don't know how to get to their state teaching standards or they know how but they don't care to access them because they are file teachers. You know the kind...Day 1 folder leads to Day 2 folder, etc.
Personally, when I started BOTH of my teaching jobs, no one even told me about teaching standards, I guess we are just supposed to know (which I did). However, also in both cases, there was never a hard copy of the standards presented to me. If it is to be a utilized tool, shouldn't it be presented to all teachers? If nothing else, it releases liability for the school administrator so the teacher can't say, "Well, nobody told me!". Teaching is a funny world. We would never expect that someone at McDonald's would already know how to make BigMac without being shown , told and given a lesson (or materialed instructions) on how to make one even if they had eaten 300 in their lifetime. Why are teachers expected to produce standards based instruction / results without the actual standards to refer to?
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