First of all . . . thank you, Cindy, for the assignment!! So far, I've spent close to six hours (over several days) exploring. I know I'm strange, but the graphic by Mindomo is one of my favorite things. I can see myself referring to that as I make my plans for second semester. If I plan well ahead of time maybe I can get some quality time for my students with computers that doesn't involve word processing!
Over the course of those hours of exploring, I've planned a Wordle, opened a Writeboard, answered several questions on Ask 500 people, explored free stuff on Teacher Tap (FREE STUFF!!!), and started a couple of Google Forms. The tool I've employed in a truly authentic manner is Quarkbase. My junior English classes are writing research papers on their chosen topics having to do with the conflict in Vietnam. That's a tough one when you consider Newsbank, EBSCO, or Gale. So we venture into the scary world of Google. The advanced search option allows us to choose the domain, but even then, some topics have very few sources. So we go to the .com, .net, and .org sites. Quarkbase allows me to take a look at a site's publication data, sponsors, internet use, etc. at a quick glance. It may not tell me all I need to know, but I feel better about allowing the use of data from sites that are frequently used and known enough to be tweeted or blogged about. Does that make sense?
The timeliness of finding Quarkbase makes me smile. I have a new tool that allows me to make a smarter judgement about the validity of an online source, and I am modeling caution and good sense in internet use, AND I am giving my students another tool for their arsenals.
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