Monday, September 21, 2009

Blog Entry 4: Emerging Technology that Supports Communication and Collaboration

While reading Chapter 3 in Egbert's text I was interested in the discussion on Internet safety. (75) This is one area where I think most adults could improve. I know that as a teacher planning technology projects Internet safety is not one of the first things I consider. It is not because I don't care about the safety of my students, I do, it's just that, like many adults probably do, I assume that they know how to be safe on the Internet. Teaching middle school it is easy to forget that they are still very young children, especially since they don't always act like it. The safety tips discussed on page 75 should be reviewed with all of my students prior to completing any online project. In fact, I think that many parents could equally benefit from this discussion so that they would know what to be teaching their children.

While reading through this discussion about safety issues I was introduced to gaggle.net. This chapter gave me a much greater understanding of how and why to incorporate technology projects that allow students to interact with their community and other communities. Prior to reading this chapter I would not have even know about the resources that are available, such as gaggle, to help create these type of projects. I now feel much more equipped to handle this type of project.

3 comments:

  1. I agree that I feel better equipped. I like that the chapter walks us through all the nitty gritty that goes into planning a collaborative project. This chapter does all the "thinking" for us!

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  2. I agree that internet safety is important. As important as it is though, I also sometimes think that schools and districts have such a fear of an incident occurring that they don’t allow valuable tools to be used. There has to be a happy medium.

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  3. I went and did some reserch on gaggle.net and I presented it to mu principal and we are in (discussions) to purchase a school edition. My principal was very intrigued with the flexibility the application provides.

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