With the world of information available on the internet, being able to navigate through it accurately and find what you need requires some caution. This is true regardless of the subject of your research, so thankfully there are some tools and methods available to improve the quality of your searching skills, which I was never aware of. Turns out the boolean search feature in the campus library search is a more universal thing than one would expect. For instance, Google offers advanced searching, which allows one to exclude terms and subjects in order to get a more specific search result. Also, and I thought this was the coolest feature, there are special symbols you can type to let the Google search bar know what specific things you are looking for. You can type hashtags to get search results for hashtags; put an "@" symbol to yield social media results; and perhaps the most helpful of all, putting a "-" symbol before a word that you want to be excluded from the contents of the search but still need for defining subject matter. I personally never knew of these before, but I will be using them from now on, especially as I go through my journey of becoming a teacher. Properly searching information is incredibly important in the teaching profession for many reasons, primarily though, because it is a skill you would want your students to acquire so understanding how to navigate the ocean of information available at student's fingertips is essential. Furthermore, teachers need to have access to as many resources and information they might need in order to enhance the learning experience, so a good search can yield good reliable resources they can use.
One of the 9-11th grade standards explained by the Florida Department of Education's PDF of ELA standards is noted as "LAFS.910.RST.3.7.". This standard focuses on how students can learn to translate mathematical or technical information into visual forms or into words. Examples of this would be creating tables or charts based on data sets, or using Photoshop to create a graphic that illustrates mathematical theorems. Other tools stated to be useful for the standard are MS Excel, MS Word, and Tuva. I feel like I understand the standard, but not to the point where I could implement it into a classroom unless I did more research on how to apply it. Also, an appropriate amount of time has to be allocated to ensure every student understands how to use and take full advantage of the technological resources available to properly meet the standard. Not only students but for me too, I can confidently say that I do not know how to use Tuva or Excel well enough to show people how to use it, so with my current skill set I don't think I could properly implement this standard and ensure it is a fruitful experience for students.
The CPALMS website is full of resources teachers, students, and parents can use for free. There are resources for all grade levels and can vary in technology usage. Upon searching for Mathematical resources on a 9-12th grade level, I stumbled across 554 choices, which illustrates just how much information there is on this site. One resource that stuck out to me was an activity that can be done in a statistics lesson or class and concerns conditional probability. It is classified as a "virtual manipulative" resource and is based on the Monty Hall Problem!! Honestly, I am biased in my choice here because I think the Monty Hall riddle is very fun to explain, and also the show where it was popularized "Let's Make a Deal" is great too. Anyways, the CPALMS resource gives the instructions and programs needed to make the activity work kind of like if it were the real game show. Since this offers a fun and applied way to learn the concept of conditional probability, I would definitely use it in my classroom especially since the fun experience offers a way for students to remember the concept.
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