I am finding a lot of resources, more than I need! In particular, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with the number of teacher websites that I have reviewed. I should be keeping better records of what I like and don't like. At this point I can't remember what I wanted to remember or where I saw it. I completely underestimated the sheer VOLUME of sites to explore. The questions is how to pare it down and find meaning. This is an important lesson for me to learn; because if I can be overwhelmed then my students will need to be taught how to evaluate what information they find and how to organize it in a useful way.
I need to modify my action plan by mocking up a site. Dare I say it? Maybe draw out my "ideal" teacher website on actual paper!
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Carrye,
ReplyDeleteI understand completely how you feel. I have gone through the same thing. What I finally did was to define exactly or nearly exactly what i wanted to look for. Then instead of using google search or yahoo search or another grneral search engine, I tried a Metasearch engine. The one I tried is named Dogpile. I know that is a funny name but it helped in my searches. I imput more detailed information into my search inquires, but I recieved more relevant respponses and stopped wasting so much time.
try it, i think you will like it too.
John C.
Carrye,
ReplyDeleteI am trying to keep track of the sites I like on my Delicious account. When you add a new website there is a place to write notes;I will usually make a few comments to remind me what I liked about the site. When I finally have time to work on setting up something over the summer I can look at the sites I bookmarked, and read my notes on it (hoepfully my own notes will make sense to me!).
Good luck!
Toby Abrahamsen
6th grade L/A
Hi Carrye,
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about feeling overwhelmed. There is so much information out there, that I find when I search something I keep getting sidetracked by other things I find. Even though they do not have to do with what I was originally searching for, I often see something that sounds interesting so I start reading it. Before I know it, I've spent 1/2 -1 hour on things totally unrelated to what I was supposed to be doing. While this can be bad if I'm short on time, I have found a lot of things I wouldn't have looked for, but that were interesting and valuable in their own right.
I think Toby had a great idea of bookmarking sites and leaving notes for yourself on what you liked about the site. This way when you go back to it, you will remember why you liked it to begin with. I think this will help me because I have a tendency to bookmark things but then later forget why I did!
Good luck!
Alison D.
HS Biology
Oh, I could kick myself! I HAVE a delicious account and use it when I am researching history subjects with tags. I can't imagine why I did not think of using it for this project. Grrr. Nothing more frustrating than finding you have wasted a bunch of time, eh? I need to stop thinking about delicious as a site I use as a student and think about how I can use it as teacher! Thanks for the reminder!
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