Ch 6 Reflection Commuity Building with Technology

I agree with the authors of our textbook that technology has definitely changed the way that people communicate. From my personal experience, I have family that is all over this country and being able to send a text or an email to tell them something is really nice. I know that I am more likely to do one of those things instead of calling because of time zone differences and not knowing when people are at work or home. That way they still get my message when it is convenient for them. I felt like the chapter talked a lot about the things we have already learned in class such as the wiki’s and blogs and how they can be used in a classroom setting. I like the idea that was mentioned about having a class wiki like the one about the Holocaust. This seems like it would be a lot of fun for the students as well as educational. They would need to so some type of research to make their adventure as realistic as possible and other students could edit and alter it since it is a wiki. This reading has shown me that there are many ways that teachers can incorporate different technologies into their teaching. The idea that blogs could be used to assess student’s understandings of the context that was mentioned is exactly what we are doing here. I really think that this would be beneficial to use in a classroom with older students. I plan on teaching the early elementary grades so I am not real sure as to how I would incorporate a blog into that. But I think that first or second graders would love to have a story wiki where they could go in and change the story like was mentioned in the chapter. The global schoolhouse sounds like an interesting thing. I read an article for our science class that was on the same lines as what was mentioned. The students in the article kept a log of the moon phases every day and shared them with students around the world. They were able to learn the different ways the moon was represented in other cultures. This is learning that they would have probably not had otherwise if it wasn’t for the internet and an educational online community to share their thoughts with. I want to use as much technology as I can in my future classrooms; I feel that it keeps students interested in the learning process and more involved.