The scavenger hunt was an interesting assignment. I, unlike my fellow students, was alone in the English Educator's version of the scavenger hunt. I was able to find each of the items necessary for the scavenger hunt since many were different types of words or commonly used items. In college this type of assignment does seem a little out of place to me but it could certainly be a useful assignment in a high school setting. Many of the items were interesting enough and an individual could definitely be creative with the photos they take. It's definitely possible that I will use this assignment format at a later date.

Scavenger Hunt

WebQuests

I was generally aware of what WebQuests were prior to the beginning of class on Monday the 20th but I was not aware of how often they were now being used. In my high school career, I do not remember using them as much as they are likely used today. I am intrigued about the idea of supplementing any readings I amy have with a WebQuest that makes the students delve deeper into themes and ideas that they may not see otherwise. I am a fan of any means of accomplishing this task, but students will likely be more accepting of using the internet and a WebQuest than a worksheet. It will definitely keep their interest longer and that alone(not to mention saving paper) makes the use of WebQuests something that will likely find its way into my classroom. QuestGarden makes this a much more accessible tool to create than I would have assumed which gives me all the more reason to go ahead and contemplate where all WebQuests can be used.

Web 2.0 and StoryBird

    When I found out my Web 2.0 tool was StoryBird, my first reaction was "What is StoryBird?" I was pretty familiar with each of the other available Wb 2.0 tools and found it unusual for me to of never heard of the site at all. To my surprise, StoryBird turned out to be a very cool website. The site gives users the ability to create their own stories and incorporate their own, as well as others', unique drawings into a type of "virtual storybook." I found myself going from one story to the next just to enjoy the incredible creativity involved in just about every other example. I foresee no difficulties in explaining how StoryBird works because it is a fairly simple design as far as creation though the final result is almost always fairly incredible.

    Unfortunately, the site is intended for elementary and middle grade students and may not be well suited for high school students. This shouldn't completely deter me from using the website in some form. For example, the website would be useful for students to create a "story" that explains how to do a specific task. This may work but overall, I'm still very excited about using StoryBird as my Web 2.0 tool.

Wiki First Impressions

Having used wiki's before, I was already aware of their usefulness in working with a group on class projects and presentations. I, however, was not aware of all of the uses that wiki's provide for a teacher. The numerous uses such as class collaboration on exam study guides and review of materials including chapter by chapter discussions that students can have about a novel intrigued me greatly. I definitely want to use wiki's in my future classes because I can easily see their usefulness in getting students to discuss their thoughts. One of the greatest difficulties for an English teacher is the fact that there always just a few students that speak up during discussion and the majority of the class is uninvolved. By requiring students to post their thoughts on individual chapters on a wiki, I can very easily see how far each student is in the novel and guide my future discussions by what the students seem to find the most interesting. Also, I could see using a wiki with colleagues in my department to keep all of us on even ground for progression through classes. The wiki is such an accessible tool and requires so little prior computer oriented knowledge. Needless to say, I am a fan of wiki's.

Reflection on Website Evaluation

I completed the assignment requiring me to evaluate the validity of a website for it's reliablility of content as well as the reliablility of the publisher. As I have been familiar with websites for quite some time and have been using them as part of numerous papers and assignments in my Undergraduate studies as an English Major, I am fairly well acquainted with the process of verifying a site's validity. This assignment was quite thorough and brought to light some issues in that process that I had yet to think of. The verification of all of the links as well as how open the author of the site is with their own personal contact information both were areas that I had not used in validation before. The website I used in the assignment was webenglishteacher.com. This is a website that has been recommended to me by numerous colleagues as a tool for teaching English. In the process of following the guidelines set in the assignment, I have only further solidified my belief in that this is a trustworthy website and that it will work well for me in the future as a teaching tool. Many philosophies, study guides, worksheets, and pieces of general information about curriculum are available here. This is a useful assignment for anyone that is not familiar with the many specific details that go into validating a website for its validity of information, scholarly or otherwise.

Learning Expectations in 486

I don't have many expectations for TPTE 486 other than that I'll become acquainted with a few tools in technology that I haven't used before. I expect to leave this course with a better knowledge of how to smoothly integrate technology within my classroom. I have always been fairly tech savvy, so there should be little that I will not be able to fairly quickly understand. I don't often come into my classes with many expectations as a rule for myself because I find that they are more often than not either wrong or just misguided. I hope to learn plenty as this course progresses.

About Me

Hello All and Welcome,
        My name is Blake Trent. I am 22 years old, from Kingsport, TN and a Capricorn. This is my blog for my Theory and Practice in Teacher Education 486 course. I have never done a regular blog, so I expect this to be an interesting learning experience. I am taking this course in the hopes of becoming slightly more well acquainted with several technologies that may make teaching my prospective students easier. I plan to begin teaching 9th and 10th grade English at Fulton High School in Knoxville, Tennessee as part of my internship at the University of Tennessee. I am currently in the midst of a very fast paced and exciting time in my life and I am both nervous and excited about how everything is going.
      I enjoy plenty of hobbies, mostly sports oriented hobbies. I am a big fan of basketball, football, and snowboarding. I love to read and learn new things about the world. I spend much of my time contemplating on different things, which is both good and bad depending on the particular contemplation. I play video games fairly often, yet not anything like I used to as a child. I feel pretty useless if I sit around for too long and I am more often than not looking to better myself in some way or another. This class is a byproduct of that very endeavor. Hopefully more about myself will be conveyed as this blog continues.