Technology in the Classroom

Technology has been embraced by educators in their classrooms. This has had positive and negative effects on learning. I will start with the positive side of technology. Technology has really helped the visual learners to be able to better learn. Powerpoints, Prezis and videos are all fairly new technologies that are available to students who are visual learners. The Internet is an amazing tool to use in classrooms and has made research papers and assignments much easier to do.

But along with these advancements in technology have come some negatives effects on student learning. Always using the Internet without checking if the information is good or not is dangerous because students can learn wrong information if they are not careful about where they are getting their information. Too much of an emphasis can be placed on technology when it is over used in the classroom. Students can still learn even if a computer is not involved, and educators need to remember this. As an educator I must strategically implement technology into my lessons with the goal of enhancing student learning.

Being an Upstanding "Citizen"

The topic of digital citizenship is a very relevant one for students today. The Internet is a great resource that is used in many classrooms throughout the world, and it is important that the students know how to be a good "citizen" in the digital world. This is essentially what digital citizenship is; it is learning how to appropriately use the Internet and all of the websites available on the Internet. There are many social networking sites, and it is important students know how to interact properly on these site. Students must be able to behave in a professional manner when in the digital world of the Internet.

If students are not taught how to be good "citizens" in the digital world, then we are heading for trouble. We live in a world where sin abounds; it does not take an expert to see this. Just as we are trying to teach values and integrity to students for living in the world, we must be teaching them good digital citizenship so a good thing like the Internet is not used for the wrong reasons. Below I have attached some links that further go into what digital citizenship is; these are links I would use to help my students become upstanding digital citizens.

http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/Nine_Elements.html
http://www.nisd.net/digitalcitizen/
http://ecitizenship.csla.net/

Is that really true?

The Internet is a wonderful invention with which you can do many different things; one can view a live feed of a basketball game from the other side of the world. Someone else can instant message another person through a social networking site. Still someone else can research online encyclopedias and dictionaries for a research project. As we do all of these tasks, it is important for us to check the site to make sure it is a "valid" website. What I mean by valid is that it should have information that is accurate and true.

There are many websites out there that are bogus websites; even on places such as Wikipedia people can post information to the world that is totally false. If I just accepted everything I read on the Internet as true I would mis-informed on many things, but we cannot disregard everything we view on the Internet either. We must learn how to navigate the Internet so we can use it to its full potential. I cannot think of a time recently when I used a website that was a bogus website, but I wanted to share with you a few bogus sites I found:
http://haggishunt.scotsman.com/
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/webhoaxes/a/snoop_dogg.htm

I hope you enjoyed some of these bogus sites that give false information. Remember to be a critical surfer of the Internet; don't believe everything you see!