Chapter 5 Focus Question #4

I was very excited to see this question because it gives me a chance to why Wikipedia can be helpful when it comes to research. I would agree with 4 points the book made such as misinformation, malinformation, messed-up information and just useless information. I believe that wikipedia is has alot of useless information, from the eye of the beholder. However, if the information can be useful to others then why would it not be used if it is right? In a high school setting, wikipedia is helpful, it is not yet a educational or proper site because it can be edited and it always change which would be a problem if you site it and it has already changed, that is why I do not like it and it should not be used citation wise. Once again, I do believe that teachers and students can use Wikipedia as a stepping stone to a proper educational site that would provide the same information as wikipedia but there is the solid feeling that it will not change or be edited. For example, if I wanted to find out the area of a square, I could find that at wikipedia, then what I should do is double check the information on a education website that would look better in a works cited page after an essay. I have always believed that the best websites to use for essays and information resources are those I get through IUSB library, ebscohost, and those ending in .gov and .edu

Project 2 Blog

Well this project was very interesting, I do somewhat wish that the ibook program did not become such an issue because I was looking forward to using a mac and getting that experience since I am comfortable with powerpoint and the microsoft suites. So there was really not a ton of new experiencese with this project sadly. With the same trend, I went into this project very up beat because I was excited to use a new mac suite that I have not used before, so due to the technical issues that we had to adjust to I was slightly disappointed because I was using powerpoint which is what A106 was for I thought. No offense to you Professor Young. If I were to do this project differently I would have just found a different way to use the geometry shapes and equations. This was a learning experience in two ways not only with using powerpoint again, but also doing more geometry research and finding out that some of the shapes are not used in high school geometry which well make the project a little interesting because some of the shapes are not used often if at all. I actually enjoyed all of the photoshopping, I had used it just briefly in another class that talked about image manipulation but only for a class session. This was fun because I got to use it for a longer period of time for a project, not just messing around in class.

Project 1 Blog

I selected the standards for this project after I had found all of the websites and completed the assignment. It was not the right way to do the project in hind sight because if I would have looked at the standards before I started I could have expanded the project and focused it on the topic standards instead of hitting one primarily and just lucking into covering another one by accident. The standards I covered I got off the Indiana Department of Education website, there were MA.G.4.1 and MA.G.4.7. Ma meaning mathematics, G meaning geometry, and 4.1 and 4.7 being the particular sections mentioned.
When I was picking out websites, I knew that I needed to pay really close attention to the ads that were on the top and sides of the websites by refreshing them multiple times to make sure there was nothing inappropriate. Beyond that I was able to find quality websites that were helpful and provided plenty of information, it was actually tough because so many of the websites focused so much and it was tough to find websites that covered just what I wanted them to cover.
I selected the task with my own creativity based on what I thought would create a lot of study work to learn about an intro to the geometry of triangles and would allow them to then solve and create their own problems to show their own ability with the subject.
There were challenges with the websites, finding ones that were not extremely broad, even though one of the sites was quite vague but it was clean advertising wise so it made sense to keep it in the project. Overcoming them was more just spending more time looking at websites finding a better one then what I had previously found.