C4C Rotating Weekly Assignments Posts #1-4

Sarah pointed out in her post students should be shown how to properly cite resource early in their education so as to avoid plagiarism, and ways to prevent it. Her complete post can be found by clicking here.

This is the response I gave to her post:

I am glad you pointed out the need to make students aware of how to cite resources in elementary school to establish a pattern for crediting others' work. The third grade teachers at my school recently asked me to help their students create photo collages in PowerPoint highlighting an animal of their choice. When we started searching for images to include, I explained the photos they found did not belong to them, and showed them how to reference the sources for their collages. Almost all of the students I helped were not aware of plagiarism, or how to avoid it. What grade level do you think is the best for starting a conversation about plagiarism?

T'Keyan's post highlighted what she thought were the top six search engines for people to use, not necessarily related to educational research, but for general use such as rating professors or job searches. You can view her post by clicking here.

This is my response to her post entitled "My Top Six Search Engines".

I liked how you included search engines which were not necessarily used only for educational research, but for other useful information such as Monster and Rate My Professor. Which ones of these engines have you had experience using prior to this assignment, and which ones, if any, do you use on a regular basis? I have only briefly used the Wolfram Alpha for this assignment, but found it interesting since the answers provided are generated from a database and require no additional searches to arrive at an answer. Also, out of the search engines you researched, did you discover a new favorite?

Allison posted a digital story of her daughter entitled "A Dancer's Story". The tale highlights the life of a young dancer with lovely photos and an excellent song selection to match the story's theme. This is my comment to Allison's video post:

Beautiful story of a beautiful dancer. I have a very dear friend, Shane Hall, who is a professional dancer, choreographer, costume designer, and studio owner. Although I have never been a dancer myself, I have seen the intense amount of work it takes to become an accomplished artist, and I admire anyone who has the talent and determination to do so. Great job relating your story. The music was a wonderful fit!

Ramsey gave a very thorough review of Khan Academy, and I found his thoughts as a math instructor to be constructive, yet thought provoking with regard to how answers to a math question can be derived in several different ways, yet the academy may only show one solution. His full post can be read by clicking here.

My response to Ramsey's thoughts are below:

Your thoughts of Khan Academy fall in line with mine after having read reviews of both proponents and critics. Many of the critics feel the videos lack structure and pedagogy, but yet give credit for the instructional videos being useful as a resource. Like yourself, I agree the resources should be used to supplement content, provide extra practice, or even provide alternate methods for arriving at a solution, but not as an isolated tool for understanding content. I can see where clicking on hints just to arrive at the answer might subtract from what a user could learn, but I feel the hints would be helpful for students who are very reluctant to learn math, especially younger students. Have you created a personal profile on the site, and have you used the site before this assignment? If so, did you use it for your own personal benefit, or to help students? Good job formulating your thoughts!