Post 7

There are many positive and negative things about using presentation software in the K-12 classroom.  Some advantages are that you can edit and format the text and information you are presenting to the classroom.  A teacher can also make a slideshow and use graphics to teach using presentation software.  Some disadvantages are that the teachers don't learn the material they are teaching as well because they figure they can just read off the slides.  If the teachers do have a lot of information on the slides, students wont listen to them because they are too busy trying to read the slides themselves.  Also, sometimes technology messes up, so then it's hard to redo a lesson plan on the spot.

Powerpoint is a very useful tool.  With powerpoint, students learn to see relationships among facts.  This is helpful because when students organize isolated facts into a presentation, they remember the facts better.  Also, when students see relationships among facts, they often generalize and come to understand some problem or process more deeply.  For a project, I will make my students use Internet resources to research the information.  Then they will put it onto a powerpoint and present it to the classroom.  Powerpoint can be effective at any age and grade level.

I think technology in education is the future of our classrooms.  I have a few questions as to why educational institues aren't spending more money to make sure the students are using techonolgy daily.  I think teachers should use more technology in their lesson plans.

Post 6

I think Web 2.0 technologies in K-12 education is a positive thing. I believe I would use them in my classroom. Web 2.0 technologies allow the students to do more than just retrive information from the Internet. Web 2.0 websites usually included these things: Search button, Links, Tags, Extenstions, and Signals. All these are helpful when using the Internet.

I think Wikipedia is a great learning source. Most of the articles are short and include a great overview of the topic. Whenever I am curiouis about a topic, I use Wikipedia to learn. Although anyone can write on it, I still think its alright for students to use it. The only time I wouldn't allow students to use it is during a formal project or paper, where they need to site their sources, because then they need 100% reliable sources.

In the past week I have learned so much with technology. All the things in the past 3 months I will use in my classtroom when I teach. The powerpoints are a main thing I will use in my educational career because its easy for students to learn off of them!

Post 5

I think the Internet is very useful to use to support student research.  There are times when it is not though.  Some useful parts are the information is not limited to text and pictures (as in printed books), it has animation, audio, and video.  Two things that can complicate student research is that the quality of information on the Internet is highly variable and it can be copied directly into a word processor.  

There are many other ways I will use web-based recourses to support student learning too.  One way will be using search engines, such as google, yahoo, and dogpile.  I also might use virtual classroom if a student is ill and cannot make it to class.  There are several web-based resources that are helpful to support student learning.

I think it is very important to be a teacher who supervises their students in a technology environment since there are so many bad things that can be put on the internet.  No matter what their age, I will make sure they don't put any personal information on the internet such as address, age, phone number, etc.  For elementary and middle school students, I would show them search engines such as KidsClick and Ask Jeeves for Kids.  For high school students, I would show them Google and Yahoo.