Chapter Six Journal

Focus Question

1)      How can teachers benefit from using information management technologies such as bookmarking, social bookmarking, information alerts, and e-newsletters?

a.      Teachers can benefit from using these services because it makes sure that they have everything needed and then some. By having all of their online information stored that can easily pull it up to teach their lessons. Or if they find something at home, they don’t have to remember the address for later use. In fact if they use social bookmarking, their students could, if given the link, look up their teacher’s public shown links and get study help or essay writing help, and then in return add their own helpful links to the pool of information just causing it to grow (pg 134-135).

Summary

               In this chapter we are talking about the many way teachers can manage their information online, online learning, the different types of educational websites that are out there for students and teacher alike, and finally how the educational websites interact and engage the students. Teachers can organize their online information through bookmarking, which is saving an address to your computer. However, this method is being taken over cloud computing because it can be accessed anywhere on any type of device as long as it has the cloud, or the information needed to get to it (pg 134). Then there is social bookmarking, which is multiple people adding to a pool of information on a subject (pg 135). This is one that I think would be best use for teachers and students. It isn’t just a teacher giving the students link. Both parties can put in links, and see what others in the world thought were important. This teaches the children about networking.

               The book mentioned other, but I don’t find them as important as these two. After talking about the multiple ways of on how to keep track of the online resources teachers can use, the books talks about how to organize them. One that is talked about is a tag cloud which shows the words, or tags, that are most used. The ones that are most often used are bolded and towards the front while the less used ones are not bolded and towards the end of the list (pg 139). I think this a great way to organize links because if someone is looking for links talking about Robert Frost, they would look for a tag that has that name on it, and up will pop all the links that the person has tagged Robert Frost in.

               The book then talks about WebQuests, which is pretty much a fancy name for an online class or element to a class. A teach sets up the lesson and the students proceed to do the work set up for them (pg 139). Honestly, I don’t quite understand why this is such a big deal. It is all sense an online class. The way the book makes it sound it is some huge difference from schooling. Instead of a teacher giving the student the paper work, they give the students websites. It is the same concept, just portrayed in a different way.  If I were to give my students papers on Robert Frost, they would still have to look up information on him. With the WebQuests, I am giving them the links on Robert Frost. The end result will still be a paper written about Robert Frost, with information gather from the internet. This is not something that I would use in my classroom, unless told I had to do so.

               Next the book mentions Virtual field trips. This is when students go on a computer and get to view some historical event “in person”, for lack of better phrasing (pg 140). This is something I see as being useful for younger students. However, I could use this form of teaching if I asked the students to write about something they see, such as the cathedrals or art museum that the book mentions (pg 141). Following this the book talks about videoconferencing, which is when a student and teacher video call each other (pg 141). This is something that I see as being very helpful if a student is homebound, or if it I am teaching an all online class. For a student to get behind in high school could be a tragic event. If I can get the information to that student, and teach them what they missed, it will end up helping me in the long run. I don’t have to hold back the rest of my class to help out one or two who missed an important part of a lesson. Also with the amount of students who are on teams and clubs that travel, this could be a great tool to make sure they understand the lesson while they are away from the classroom.

               Finally to end the chapter, for my purposes anyway, the book talks about online learning and virtual schools. Before I state what the book says on the debate going on with this who ideal, I hate the idea of virtual school. For students that are homebound, this is a great substitute. But, for those who can go and decided not to, I think they are cheating themselves out of an education. One of the only reasons I am taking an online course is because they don’t offer EME 2040 or AML 2020 on campus. There are some things that just can’t be read, they have to be taught. The book states on page 143, “… virtual schools employ fewer teachers at generally lower salaries and offer fewer employment benefits to employees, factors which contribute to an improved profit margin…”. This is after page 142 states that between 2000 and 2011, virtual school have seen a 3.5 million increase! This is insane to think about.

 Tech Tools 6.2 Page 137

               For this tech tool it talks about the website Delicious. We are currently using this, and I have found it very helpful. While I know that it is something that is going to be shown I haven’t been using the site to the fullest of its capabilities. Because of this I just downloaded the app for the site. Knowing myself I know that I will use it more if it at my fingertips. This is a much saver way of saving my links than just not closing a tab until I do what I need to do with it. I think I may also use this site for my other course and create separate tags for each course. Included I a link to my Delicious account.

Resources

Textbook- Maloy, Robert, Verock-O'Loughlin, Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.