Drape's Takes: EDT 612 - Tonight's Class

EDT 612 - Tonight's Class

My Creating Meaningful Learning with Technology class went really well tonight. This class is for teachers that are earning a Master's Degree from National University while also preparing to pass the exam for National Board Certification. Very cool program - I wish it would have been available to me when I was slaving away for my Master's Degree.

In today's class, we covered a wide range of topics and web sites. Here's a quick run-down:

APA - Every graduate student should be familiar with APA (or MLA or whatever style format your university suggests). For some reason, they rarely offer classes in APA style, but every professor expects you to just know it. I gave the class an overview using several of my favorite sites to reference: 1, 2, 3, 4
WebQuest Garden - This site is a great starting place for teachers that have never created a WebQuest (search for sample WebQuests here). One drawback - the site only allows you to upload photos that are less than 80K.
Productivity Tools - I'll be honest: I no longer know what a "productivity tool" is. They used to only include word processors and spreadsheets, but it now seems that there are literally thousands of tools out there that could be appropriately labels as such (hence, it's often better to work smarter than it is to work harder). Anyway, here's a list of a few productivity tools that we discussed: Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel), Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Pages, Blogger, Inspiration, and FileMaker Pro.
Image Sites - When you are going to include images in a class web site, it's important that you only include non-copyrighted images, or images that are licensed with a Creative Commons license. These sites are great for finding such images: Pics4Learning, Flickr.
Search Engines - You may not have realized this, but there is a plethora of search engines out there (there's more to life than Google and Yahoo). This site has a rather large list - I'd recommend performing the same search on several different engines to compare results.
Bookmarking - If you've ever wished you could take your Internet bookmarks with you wherever you surf the web, then you'll love Del.icio.us - I know I do.

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APA - Every graduate student should be familiar with APA (or MLA or whatever style format your university suggests). For some reason, they rarely offer classes in APA style, but every professor expects you to just know it. I gave the class an overview using several of my favorite sites to reference: 1, 2, 3, 4
WebQuest Garden - This site is a great starting place for teachers that have never created a WebQuest (search for sample WebQuests here). One drawback - the site only allows you to upload photos that are less than 80K.
Productivity Tools - I'll be honest: I no longer know what a "productivity tool" is. They used to only include word processors and spreadsheets, but it now seems that there are literally thousands of tools out there that could be appropriately labels as such (hence, it's often better to work smarter than it is to work harder). Anyway, here's a list of a few productivity tools that we discussed: Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel), Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Pages, Blogger, Inspiration, and FileMaker Pro.
Image Sites - When you are going to include images in a class web site, it's important that you only include non-copyrighted images, or images that are licensed with a Creative Commons license. These sites are great for finding such images: Pics4Learning, Flickr.
Search Engines - You may not have realized this, but there is a plethora of search engines out there (there's more to life than Google and Yahoo). This site has a rather large list - I'd recommend performing the same search on several different engines to compare results.
Bookmarking - If you've ever wished you could take your Internet bookmarks with you wherever you surf the web, then you'll love Del.icio.us - I know I do.