Blog #6

The school site I looked at was Palm Bay Magnet High schools. They have sites for every one of their classes, even those that have multiple classes on the same material each have their own site. This site is for one of the AP US government class consisting of 11th and 12th graders. Publically, the site has all of the homeworks, bell works, and powerpoints presented in class. There are also some links that are helpful to students and a calendar of due dates. As I went to this school, I know that when you log in you can see grades and more specific class and calendar information.
http://www.edline.net/pages/Palm_Bay_High_School/Classes/1617_21064205JV27

As a teacher, I definitely plan on having a class website that can be multipurpose. For example, Weebly has the option to add a password to your entire website or certain passwords to certain pages. I plan on having my own page, with its own password, as a part of the site where I can log on from any computer and access my lesson plans, any documents I plan on handing out or referring to in class, or enter my grades. By having this easy accessibility I remove a lot of the hassle of carrying around papers, organizing files on my computer, and carrying around a flash drive. Not only that but if I made a page with personal passwords for each of my students, I could post grades for them and their parents to check at any time with personalized comments on assignment.


All of the technologies in the sandbox can be used in the classroom, some directly and some you have to be more creative with. An example of something that can be used as is would be the SmartBoard. Many textbooks have interactive programs to be used with the board, so a math teacher can flip through the pages of the textbook on the SmartBoard and underline things, add notes in the margins, and solve problems by hand all at the same time. An example of a technology that may need to be thought in the more abstract is the 3D printer. While it may not seem entirely applicable, due to its flexibility it can definitely be useful. To continue the math example, there are a series of mathematical concepts that are provable conceptually but difficult to understand in reality, such as the möbius strip or the umbilic torus. With a 3D printer, a math teacher could prove these concepts on paper then print out and show their students these objects to better grasp the reality of it.