Too Much Technology?

Is it possible for kids to have too much exposure to the internet? Is teaching them all about technology and how to search on the web, etc, too much for young elementary students? We have to remember that kids are still kids. Not everything should be at their fingertips. It's important to closely monitor internet usage by such young kids because we wouldn't want them to come in contact with any inappropriate sites.

Keeping up with Technology

Technology is changing each and everyday and our students will be the people of the future who will need to adapt to it all. How much should we teach within schools? How much of it should they be responsible for learning on their own? It's hard to say exactly, but hopefully kids have the priviledge to attend schools that have the money to keep up with the changing technologies. Hopefully the government can provide funding to those schools that cannot afford these new or even some older technologies on their own.

Apple or PC?

Recently I've been working on a multimedia project for another class and it got me thinking about whether PCs or Apples are more practical and easy to use in the classroom and in general. I think Apples have a lot of great programs and seem to be extremely user friendly, but then again PCs have always been more popular as home computers. Which computer system is better to use with kids? My experience is that many schools actually do have Apples.

Microsoft Excel

I have always thought of Excel as a complicated program that's only useful to people in the accounting field. However, learning how to use the program and seeing what is possible with the software is helpful and informative. It's interesting to see how the program allows you to make charts and calculate data which is practical and could be useful in the classroom. I think that we should also try to familiarize the students with this program as early on as possible. If they see how useful it can be and know how to do certain tasks, they will benefit greatly.

Importance of Word

Microsoft Word is always a useful program to be familiar with. Almost every job may require the use of such a program at some point, and it's necessary for students and future teachers to know how to utilize the program. Hopefully students in our classrooms will be exposed to Microsoft Word or an equivalent program during their younger years so that they can learn how to use it by the time they reach middle school and high school where they will need to type papers and other things.

Powerpoints

Powerpoint presentations are a very effective method of teaching lessons in classrooms. From personal experience, teachers who use powerpoints to give notes and show visuals are more effective and the information is more easily understood. Knowing how to make a good powerpoint is important for both our time in school and our future careers. Students will benefit from our efforts to create powerpoints for lessons in the classroom.

Websites for Classrooms

Having a class website would be very exciting for the students and very convienient for the teacher. Teachers can post homework assignments, reminders for quizzes and tests, messages for students and parents, grades (which should be visible to individual students only), pictures from class trips or events, and many other things. It's very practical for students and teachers to have constant two-way communication while they are at home because it will be easier for the teacher to give help. Also, the site would be a good way for parents to monitor student progress.

Websites for Students?

Our assignment for this week has made me think about whether or not it would be useful for students to have their own website. They might use it to publish writing that they do in class or writing they do on their own that they want to share with classmates. Teachers can monitor what students post on their sites and enable the students to see each other's work. I think this would give the kids a sense of accomplishment, having their own website and even more, having their own writing published.

Imaging

The imaging assignment for this week was a fun project to do. It was a good way to learn several aspects of editing and posting images on the web. These skills will definitely come in handy either in our future classrooms or in some other aspect of our lives, whether it be designing a website for fun or for a project. I had never heard of Macromedia Fireworks before, but the program is very easy to use and can be useful for many different things. Other programs like Photoshop can often be very confusing and complicated for an inexperienced user. As future teachers, this type of assignment would be great for our students because they can share their own creations with their classmates. Whether it be personal pictures or research assignment visuals, knowing how to edit and create their own images will be very enjoyable for students.

Plagarism

Plagarism is a very important issue, especially in college. Plagarizing is something so serious that it can get someone kicked out of college! But how can teachers and professors get through to students and let them know just how important it is to do one's own work? I think the solution is to start encouraging kids to be creative and do their own work at a very young age, as well as informing them about plagarism (to some extent) in elementary and middle school. I think that if kids are informed about the seriousness of the issue early on in their school careers, they will be much less inclined to plagarize in the later years. I also think that high school teachers have to continue to stress the importance of doing original work. Websites like turnitin.com and the other sites like it are good ways to ensure kids are doing their own work and prove to them that teachers will find out if they do in fact copy someone else's work. One of my high school English teachers used that website and everyone in my class was sure to cite every single piece of information that they used in their papers out of pure fear of getting caught by Turn It In!

My first blog ever!

What to discuss? Well since we're all elementary education majors, I must say that as I go further into the major with more and more classes, I'm getting very excited to become a teacher. The different field placements are definitely reaffirming my desire to work with kids for a living. This technology class is adding a whole new aspect to what comprises an elementary classroom these days... I know I didn't have computers actually within my classrooms when I was that age! Oh, and the fact that such young kids are learning how to use computers and the internet is pretty scary! I feel like that will make them grow up a lot quicker with such easy access to the entire world..