| February 2011 News |
| Miscellaneous > Student Handouts News Archives > 2011 Student Handouts News Archives |
| It seems like we were ringing in the new year just days ago, yet the month has already passed us by. Luckily, we were able to use the bitter cold as our excuse for staying in and working on the website. And with the way things look in the forecast, there are several more snow days ahead. |
| It has been a busy month! After all, how often do students get to watch a revolution play out on the evening news? Many of you are actively following the unfolding events in Egypt with your students. For those interested in gaining background information, check out the BBC's profile on Hosni Mubarak here. FYI: We check out our visitor map in Google Analytics daily, and noticed for ourselves that there have been no recent visitors from Egypt, evidence of the cessation of internet access in the country. To our users in Egypt: Our thoughts are with you that your crisis may be peacefully resolved soon, and that stability and prosperity will be the Egyptian hallmark. |
| As always, we are busy devoting every free moment to getting things done on this website. We are busy bees indeed! Not only are we working on this website, but we have devoted some time (and money) to promotion. Several schools and teachers around the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, and Canada are receiving Student Handouts tote bags in the mail. If you are among the recipients, please enjoy the eco-friendly bags and spread the word about this free website. If you would like to receive a free tote bag, drop us an email with your name and mailing address to: studenthandouts[AT]gmail.com. |
| Elsewhere on the internet: |
| Have you checked out CNN Student News? We are loving it as a great tool to use with students - making them better informed, and more interested, in current events. |
|
Qwiki
also looks to be a lot of fun. The gist of it is that you
click on a topic. A video/flash screen starts playing out
the definition or description of the topic. Pictures flash
across the screen, and text scrolls along the bottom of the
screen, all while a voice (one that sounds like text-to-speech
software) reads the text from the screen. Pros: You can see and learn about a topic (e.g., Lake Titicaca, cheetah, World War II) very quickly with a lot of pictures. Cons: The text-to-speech can be a bit off (oddly pronounced words*). The speech is read quite quickly (perhaps to keep each description to a minute or less), meaning that struggling readers may find it hard to keep up (if they try to read along). And honestly, the voice speaks so quickly that it was hard for us to keep up. In some of the descriptions we viewed, the presentations merely proved the point that complicated events (such as World War II) can never be properly explained in 60 seconds. Our Review and Rating: We are torn. Our guess is that students will generally like Qwiki, some teachers will like it, but most teachers will hate it. As teachers, we see ourselves hating it for the same reason we would have loved it as students. Picture it...the big World History exam days away. We (as students) have a giant list of terms to know. We go to Qwiki and enter each term. In a minute per term, we have enough superficial knowledge to pass the test with a decent grade. You may be thinking...but wait! You have hundreds upon hundreds of quiz games that test "superficial" and "trivial" knowledge! Yes, that's true. But we also have creative lesson plans, DBQs that launch thoughtful discussions, and much more. Qwiki has great potential as a teaching and learning tool, but we fear for students who zone out for the semester, use Qwiki to pass tests, and end up with little or no true comprehension. |
| *We have implemented text-to-speech software on this website as read-alongs to some of our images. We love using this software, but there are drawbacks. The software (no matter how good it is) never truly sounds human. And, no matter how good it is, there are a lot of words that are mispronounced. Often, when preparing a video or sound clip with text-to-speech software, we find ourselves scrambling to write terms and names phonetically so that the software will pronounce them correctly. With Qwiki (at least in its current version), it appears that programmers inputted the text without later checking the pronunciation. Hopefully, future updates will fix this bug. |
| Miscellaneous > Student Handouts News Archives > 2011 Student Handouts News Archives |
