Educational Technology

Technology in the classroom has come along way over the years. Not only has it become more widely used, but it also is continuing to change as we speak. One major hurdle, that is more relevant to today's technology is the safety for children. As I had mentioned in my previous post, it is vital that we as teachers keep our students safe while surfing the internet, whether that is on computers or Ipads. A great way for us to come over this hurdle is to use internet protection tools and to educate the students on safe ways to use their technology. 

     

In my classroom, I definitely want to use technology, but I do not want to depend on it. I am sure that by the time I am teaching there will be technology that I have not even heard of yet. I can not wait to see how influential technology is in the classroom in the upcoming years. 

Pros and Cons

           Using both Microsoft word and power point and using Goggle Docs and Slides, I am more familiar with which one is best to use in certain situations. I have always used Microsoft, and never really got the chance to use Google Docs or Slides.



 Honestly, I ran into a lot of issues when using Google docs. First, the formatting was not as easy to access and the fonts were not the same as in Word. I was getting pretty frustrated. In that instance, I would recommend Word over Docs, however I  really enjoyed using Google Slides. The options for personalizing, in my opinion, were  a lot nicer than in PowerPoint. For students, I would recommend using Microsoft over Google, mainly because it is a lot more self explanatory.

I found this article interesting on Word vs. Docs.

Students and the Internet

       When I am running my own classroom, electronics (and the internet) will for sure be a huge part of the students' everyday interaction. When having young children working with the internet, there are some very obvious concerns, such as inappropriate content, misuse of internet, etc. Now that we are in a modern age where technology is around every corner of a classroom, schools take precautionary measures to make sure that inappropriate websites and images do not pop up in a student's searches.



       One concern of mine is the use of games on the internet. If you are having students on the web doing an assignment, they can easily get distracted by gaming sites and not get there work done. At my school district, they managed to block almost every well known gaming site that students could access on the computers. There is an awesome website that I found called Safe Search Schools, which is a "browser" of sorts for kids to use to search safely and effectively. The only downside is that this still does not block them from using the regular internet. I want my students to see the internet as a positive thing. It is a tool that will help them learn, explore, and have fun, while keeping the mindset on academics. 








Safe Search School:  http://www.safesearch.school/

Why I Chose Blogger

When we were first told that we were going to be using blogs in the class, I was a little terrified. Not only have I never used a blog before, but I always thought they were difficult to manage. I had to create a blog way back in the 8th grade (I know, it seems like forever ago), and it was so challenging! When choosing a site to use from the options given, I wanted to make sure that I picked a platform that was easy enough for me to navigate, but also nice for you the class to look at. It turned out that blogger was the sight for me! It also was much easier to set up my account because it is a site run through google.

My very first impression of blogging is that it is not near as difficult as I first believed it would be. Actually, blogging  doesn't seem much different than anything you would type into a word document. I can't wait to see how useful this blog becomes as we all learn about technology in the classroom!