Friday, June 8, 2007

Ed Tech Blog #3

The final 75 pages of "A Teacher's Project Guide to the Internet" written by Kevin Crotchett is devoted to various listservs, newsgroups, FTP sites, links, gopher sites, and content specific sites. The book also offers a glossary of common HTML tags and an interactive CD-rom that accompanies the book.

The author breaks down the end of the book into appendixes and sorts all the informations into categories ranging from art and literature to math and social studies. He guides you through the pros and cons of various education sites and walks you through the governments web pages dedicated to schools. There is a section offering links to lesson plans, classroom activities and curriculum design tools.

All in all this book was very helpful. Some of the information was review however the book presents a lovely and simplistic case for involving technology in the classroom. A lot of the projects are engaging and fun. The thing I liked best about this book is the real world application that it presents. I think both students and teachers would benefit from this train of thought.

Blog # 2

I am continuing my journey through Kevin Crotchett's book called "A Teacher's Project Guide to the Internet." In these chapters of the book the author gets into the nitty gritty of the internet. He offers a brief tutorial of HTML code and even gives suggestions for lesson plans teaching students how to use HTML. After his students were familiar with the internet code he began having them engage in various projects. For example one project was called "The Library of Reviews" where students were asked to post their book reports online using a critics voice. Now their reviews are available for other students around the world to read.

Kevin stresses that it is important to become part of the ever growing virtual community. In this book he offers suggestions about creating your own class web page. Allowing students to give their input into the site will help them develop self efficacy towards the world wide web. It also gives them a sense of ownership and pride, and it presents an opportunity for them to see real world applications of these important internet skills they are learning.

Every good teacher strives to find new and exciting ways to engage parents in the classroom. Creating a class web page or a blog is a great way for parents to get involved. Allow for assignments that parents can respond to, or hold online discussions that they can participate in. The web can be a great way to reach out to parents who have difficult work schedules and can't make it to conferences or field trips.

The main point of this book is simply to get connected and stay connected. The internet offers our students a new world of opportunity, but it is our job as teachers to help them navigate successfully through that world.