This week my group presented in the class. We talked about some good and bad aspects of the Internet in education. Some of the more important things we talked about were teacher resources, teacher networking, and the overwhelming amounts of information. The Internet is overflowing with information. We have to be careful when we give students a topic and tell them to go research it because often students will take the first site that is listed in google. We must inform students to be critical of the information online and that often they are ranked based on money or advertising.
Teacher resources and networking go hand in hand with student learning. I believe you want to be a successful teacher you must be a networked teacher. Teachers who get and share good learning activities with other teachers only increase their students success. The Internet allows for many networking and resource sharing opportunities. The one place I liked the most was the teacher resource section on facebook. Other teachers can share resources here, but even more importantly you can have conversations with many other teachers.
On Wednesday we had a very interesting presentation on technology, education, and the future. This presentation was crazy good. We seen where some of the technology is going and how we have to keep up with it. The part on 6th sense was intense, but I am not sure how I would use that in the classroom. So if you have any ideas please let me know.......
There were 2 parts that still stick out in my mind, the first thing is wolfram alpha, I think this will be something I use as a teacher and "forget" to tell my students about. This site could really change people teach. You can go onto that site and it solves equations for you, yikes good luck math teachers. The other thing I really liked was when we used our cellphones as a recorder. I liked it because it translates it into text. I think this could be valuable when students get to university lectures. It could also be used when a guest speaker or elder comes into the class, so the students can just listen and not have to take down the notes because they can get them off of the 'site' later. The interesting question Ryan brought up was can this text be translated into a different language? If it can I think this may be one of the more important tools when you have a class of EAL students.
That's all for this week.......
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I agree Aime, I think that the most successful teachers are the ones that are constantly networking and finding new relevant teaching ideas and resources. I personally can't wait to start networking and finding good people to discuss education with on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteI also think that we definitely need to be educating our students about the good and bad things on the internet. This can be a tough job to do because in order to do so we need to "catch up" to the students and be aware of what they are looking at and whats new and popular.
The presenters on Wednesday were great and had so many interesting things to discuss. I think Ryan's point was great and if they don't already have it they certainly should as it would be a great asset in the EAL learning community.
Good blog Aime, I think that as teachers we need to keep up with the technology aspect of teaching. This will be challenging for teachers as technology is changing everyday. This is evident in wednesday presentation as they showed us some things that I did not think were out there yet.
ReplyDeleteHey Aimee good post. I Think wolfram alpha is something I would definatly try to use in my classroom. Being a math teacher you need to be more creative with this program and try to use it as a tool rather then a cheating device.
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