Wednesday, October 14, 2009

How do you provide equal access to the digital world?

Regardless of how much (or little) technology that you have within a classroom, each student should have equal access to it. To provide equal access, you may need to consider the needs of each of your students. Students come to us with a wide range of abilities and disabilities. Some students may have hearing, vision, or fine motor skill issues which require special consideration when implementing technology. You may have students whose parents will not allow them to use the computer, for various reasons. In order to provide equal access, it may be beneficial to explain in the beginning of the year to each parent how you plan on using the computer for learning, and what safeguards are in place to ensure the safety of their children. Possibly if the parents understand that technology can actually advance their child's education, they may feel more comfortable and be more willing to let their child participate. If they still don't give permission, assignments will have to be adapted so that they student can still participate and learn the content. If this occurs, it is not the teacher , but the parent, that is denying the equal access to the technology.

Monday, October 12, 2009

How and Why Teachers Need to Evaluate Websites for Use in the Classroom

During the time that students are with their teacher, the teacher is acting in the capacity of a guardian authority, and as such, has the responsibility to make sure that all material that students use is age and content appropriate. For elementary students, the teacher can do this by pre-selecting the websites that the students will use, checking for age and source of information. All links in the selected websites should also be checked for the same information. Students also need to be taught, starting at a young age, how to evaluate websites for themselves. They have to be taught healthy skepticism, so that they question the validity of information. The teacher should model for the students the process of evaluating websites and what to look for. Then students can be provided with a checklist that they can use when doing projects that details each item they need to check for. The students first project could be practicing this process alone, before they have to do a research project. When doing more detailed projects, this checklist should be turned in with the project so that the teacher knows the student followed the procedure, and is learning the process. This could be an item graded on the rubric for the project.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Chapters 7 & 11

I am amazed by the sheer volume of products and applications that are available on the internet for sharing and collaborating. One that intrigued me was Sribd , purported to be the largest social publishing website in the world. What I love about it is that anyone can be an author by submitting something to Scribd to be published. Just because a publisher rejects a work, doesn't mean that it doesn't have value. Through Scribd, anyone who is interested in the topic can find your work and read it. You can find documents from students, teachers, everyone, and anyone. Even the government is posting to it!