This week we were asked to check out Google+ Communities. Google+ is a free app that has so many options that are very beneficial to teachers. There are many resources available here that include communities where teachers are able to join to share input, questions, and ideas. The possibilities are endless and you are able to search to find just what you are looking for, educationally related or for your own personal use. As a teacher, I find this app very helpful to find out new information that would benefit my students in the classroom. I joined a few communities that I thought seemed interesting and that would help to make me a better educator.
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One of the communities I joined was called "Connected Learning." This community is all about using technology effectively in the classroom and has members from all over the world. People from all over are able to post questions or ideas they have or are using in their own classrooms. One post talks about virtually walking across the United States and asks for people from a certain state to help out with this idea. Without this community, this awesome idea might not have been possible! People can connect with this specific teacher and share information about their state in a way that is more meaningful than just reading it out of a text book. There are also teacher resources and ideas posted in this community as well. One resource I find that I really like is a prepositions of time worksheet. A member created this worksheet and shared it to the community so others could benefit from it. I really like this worksheet because it gives examples for the prepositions and it uses pictures in the problems to answer. This would be helpful for visual learners especially. As a future teacher, I find these resources and ideas very useful and I can see myself using these things in my future classroom. I think it would be neat and exciting for the kids to do a virtual tour of the U.S. using this community to find people to connect with. Overall, I really like this community and I can't wait to see what other cool resources this community will continue to offer.
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Another community that I looked into was called "Flipped Learning." This community discusses ways to use technology so teachers are able to spend more time interacting with students in the classroom. There are many resources in this community as well that show blog posts, articles, discussion topics, and other ideas that pertain back to a flipped classroom. One post I found very compelling was a link to a blog article titled, "10 Projects Every Google Apps Classroom Should Try." After clicking on the link, I was redirected the blog with all of these ideas that would be very beneficial in my future classroom. These ideas are really neat and are a great way to get your students familiar with technology. One of my favorite ideas from this article is to make YouTube Playlists which is a fun way to teach decision-making skills. I can see my future students really liking this project and we could even tailor it to find music for a certain time period for a history lesson or something of that sort. I highly recommend that fellow teachers should check this article out! Another thing I really like about this community is that you are able to get feedback directly from teachers who have used flipped learning in their classrooms. Since this is still a relatively new concept, it is very helpful to see how this concept was used in other classrooms and to get ideas on how to incorporate it into your own classroom if you choose to do so. One post I found was a teacher trying to write a research paper over this topic and specifically was looking for feedback from teachers who have used this method in their classroom. I am able to learn a lot just from reading this post and to get ideas for my own classroom this way!
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