Post Number 9

When I was in highschool, my AP American History used a website called historyteacher.net. There are self-check quizzes, vocabulary, and important facts and people for the main history courses taught in the upper level grades, which is what I plan on teaching. She would take some questions from the self-check quizzes and use them on her tests, so it was always beneficial to look at the different lessons and take the quizzes. There are also powerpoint presentations created by both students and teachers that are very interesting and fun to go through. As a teacher, I plan to utilize this sight because of it's many benefits for students.

The site itself is very user friendly and easy to find your way around on. Again all the main history courses are on the site and once you click one, it takes you to a page specifically for that history and there are many options from there. The site is very appealing in looks and easy to read. It can be a little flashy, but I think the content and the benefits of using the site outweigh that aspect. There are many options for topics under each history category, so it isn't just a small site that gives little back to the user. I would encourage my students to use it as a supplementary tool to my lessons and I would probably take some test questions from the site myself. It's always nice to reward those that go above and beyond for their classes.

I plan on teaching high school history, hopefully American or European. I wouldn't really use Excel as much as say a math teacher, but I can think of some uses for it in my classroom. I would probably use it to make up test score sheets, so students can see how they did compared to the rest of their class and others, as well as show averages and things like that. I could also use Excel to make graphs of different trends throughout history, such as population booms or declines. Being able to easily input information and get a chart is essential for any classroom teacher in my opinion. Charts and spreadsheets are useful in almost every subject in some form or fashion.

My final course project will be somewhat challenging, but not too hard at the same time. I have ideas to go over with my partner in class, but I don't think it will be too bad since we have an idea of what we want to do. The grant would be applied to a high school history classroom, and there are plenty of ways to integrate technology into a classroom like that, so I don't think we will have too many problems with each part of the project. The only challenge would be if she doesn't come to class, but she's always been there, so I'm not worried about that. I think I will probably end up writing the grant request in Word, since it is applicable to my subject area, and I may do the spreadsheet as well while she does the PowerPoint presentation. We will work it out tomorrow and hope for the best. I'm really looking forward to the end result!