Science on the WEB!

Today class had to take an unexpected route, just like science there are things that are going to happen that are very unexpected. We had to have class the new and improved way, through the web. I think this gave Dr. Smirnova  an opportunity to show us as growing educators and scientists that we need to explore new and improved ways of using the web. It was an overwhelming experience because this was my first online class, but what i found was if i never tried it then i would never feel comfortable doing it. This is important when going into my own classroom, it is going to be extremely important for me to explore new things so that i can bring that knowledge to my students.
Dr. Smirnova used a few different teaching techniques that i found to be very important when you are working with your students. For one she had the 3 pluses and a wish, this form of peer feedback is important for students to be engaged in. It allows students to critic and help other students, but they are also actually helping themselves by seeing things on their peers work that they can use to improve their own. Along with the peer feedback, during class we created our E-folio profiles. Dr. Smirnova allowed us to be hands on and do it ourselves, this is important for all teachers to do within the classroom. It can be for math, science, even reading, simply allowing the students to discover and be given the ability to discover new things on their own with the teachers support is very beneficial. Dr. Smirnova gave us enough support and direction when it came to the site, but she also wanted us to try and do it on our own so that we can become more comfortable moving around this site and the web in general. Overall this classroom experience made me feel a lot more comfortable on the web and showed me some of the tools the web offers to make a classroom more engaging and educational.
Unfortunately I was not able to experience this online class opportunity to the full extent to which i would have liked because my microphone did not work. I was not able to give as much input as i would have liked, but in general it opened my eyes to a world on the web that I did not know existed.