NSDL

I found all of these websites in the NSDL library

Air Junk
This is a site that is about the specks, flecks, and particles in air. It has a a project/activity that enplanes how to make a junk detectors to find out what is in the air that we breath. I think that this would be a very interesting project for students. The project can be simplified or made more difficult depending on the age of the students in the class. It is a quick project that would not take long to get up and running. I would use this site when discussing air and things that are found in the air. I would use it to show then that even if we cannot see the particles they are there.

Where Do Butterflies Come From
This site captured my attention because I have been discussing and learning about the importance of introducing students (preschool or young grades) to bugs and butterflies are a great way to do that. This site has a art activity that will help students understand that butterflies come from caterpillars that make Chrysalis and eventually hatch/come out of it. I would use this site in my class because it has a good integrated project that would help students have a deeper understanding about butterflies because of the hands on aspect of the project.

Helping Your Children Learn Science
This site is created by the U.S. Department of Education. It is a site that has many links on it. I looked through these links and found them to be very interesting. They all contain activities or projects that are dealing with a science concept and a hands-on activity that helps illustrate the concept. I would use this site a lot for all of the different discoveries that it could give my students. It has things that are simple which would be fun to do with younger grades and others that would be very interesting to do with older grades.

Internet

WWW: Stands for the world wide web. It is a large database of information that is stored in servers around the world.

Definition of the internet: I would have my students think of the school library and all of the books and information that it has. The internet is similar to a library but it has a lot more information that can be shared on it. You can do things such as email, research, sell and buy things. The internet is stored in computers called servers all over the world instead of one building like a library. I would use a graphical representation and a demonstration to help students of all learning styles understand the concept of the internet. I would use a simple diagram that has a few words, pictures, and arrows for the graphical representation and I would demonstrate how the internet works by getting on the internet and showing the students all the things they can do on it.

URL:Uniform Resource Locators are the addresses used to locate pages and to move from one page to another.

Common errors:
Bad request:The address that was entered was not correct or that the user does not have the permission to use the site.
Unauthorized: The user is not part of the group that has access to that page. Like email accounts and such.
Not Found: The address can't be found or does not exist anymore.

HTML:Hypertext Markup Language is used as the computer language to make hypertext documents.

http: Hypertext Transfer Protocol is used to transfer hypertext files over the internet.

I see the internet playing a very big part in my classroom. As a teacher I can use it to research my lessons and other information. I can see my students using it to answer their own questions and for class project or assignments. The drawback of the internet is that the information that students view cannot always be filtered all the way and they could find inappropriate information or pictures during their surfing for an assignment.

iMovie Assignment

I did like the imovie assignment we did in class. I thought that it would be a great way to involve technology in lessons. I think that the older grades, such as 3rd grade and up, would really enjoy this kind of assignment. If a group of students was given the responsibility to teach something or inform the whole class. I think that if would be more difficult and time consuming for younger grades. I think that students at younger ages could use the imovie software with direction and help from a teacher. To find the balance between learning technology and the concepts is to keep the first couple of assignments in imovie short and sweet. This will help students learn a little bit more about the program every time but not spend all of their time on the technology part of the assignment. I like imovie and can see myself using it or another software program similar to it in my future classrooms. I think that it would be a great teaching tool and a learning tool for the students. I think that software like imovie would help students learn information better because they are using a more hands on approach.