4 Teaching with Standards

• The social studies, American history, standard for fifth grade, SS.5.A.1.2, discusses historical inquiry and analysis by utilizing time lines to identify and discuss American history time periods. 
• If students would like to view time lines of American history time periods a simple google search will pull of thousands of images of the time period they need. To learn and apply this standard, students can go to http://www.myhistro.com/ to create free interactive time lines with information with facts from American history lessons. 
• I would have students create their own time lines as we go through chapters of information so that they have a place that is a visual representation of the events we learn about. 
• This website fits the Chapter 8 category of a content specific software since it can only be used to outline when events occurred in a social studies or history setting.

The Internet is almost always a great resource for researching. The Internet provides access to web pages, journals, articles, photos, videos, blog posts, and so many other great resources that are all in one place. Sometimes, the Internet provides false information so it is important to back your research up with many other sources. While the Internet is the best tool for research, I am a firm believer in physical books and going to libraries. I want my children to use the Internet for research, but I also want to have my students experience research the old fashion way. The Internet is always useful, as long as you cite your sources and have extra resources as backup for your thoughts.

To evaluate resources, I used the tool easybib. When you copy and paste a link it tells you whether or not the source is credible. I also stayed away from things like wikis/wikipedia since people can edit them which makes them not as reliable for accuracy. I prefer to use things like peer reviewed journals from databases since they are definitely reliable. Through the podcast I learned about Author Bias Content Design Technical elements acronym for evaluating websites. Another important factor is how stable the website is, or how likely it is to change. Reviewing domain name, following the links you provide, and viewing advertisements are important to judge how reliable the source is and make sure it is safe for students to view. I did not know many of the ways to judge a website but I want to utilize these in my classroom in the future and in my daily life.

By working on the web hunt, I learned that there are many ways to simplify googling so that you have a more specific results. I learned that many online tools meet standards that I can use in my classroom in the future.

Web hunt challenges:
Find a picture of a cat that you could reproduce on t-shirts and sell at your school.
Find a website that provides a free graphing calculator online to use in your math class.