Chapter 5 & 6

Taking this course makes me realize how lucky our generation of teachers is. We have the use of technology and with that come the Internet! The Internet makes researching information so much easier for teachers and students. Like what I read in these two chapters, however, the technology and the Internet also give teachers some challenges. As we all know, technology become an essential part of our daily life. Even three-year-old children know how to use smartphones, tablets, and computers. As teachers, we should teach students how to use technology rather than do not let them use technology.

In chapter 5, they give us a lot of good ideas, ways, and websites to help teachers lead our students use the technology effectively and safely. Teachers use different search engines to try to find ways to better their instruction. Students use search engines to gather information about topics and lessons. Although people still use books, newspapers, magazines, libraries, and presentations to acquire information, I believe that it is more important for us to get information from Internet. Getting information from Internet is fast, simple, and easy to just type in a word and gets immediate results, however, a great many of information will make us face other challenges, which are (1) how to teach our students use the Internet in the correct way, (2) how to evaluate information, and (3) how to follow copy right laws. Even I learned a lot from this chapter, I still have to find more details to support these advice and do more observation in the real classrooms to see our students' reactions when they use the Internet.

In chapter 6, it explores about how teachers can benefit from using information management technologies. These are bookmarking, social bookmarking, information alerts, and e-newsletters that teachers can use. This will help teachers organize information that they will need to prepare lessons. As for WebQuests, we need to do a WebQuests for this course so I want to share some of my understandings on it with all of you. In the passed ten years, a student might read articles or selections from books and then write a paper or a report, but in 21th century, students are using Internet as a helper to find information and finish their work. WebQuests are online inquiries by students that are designed and guided by teachers. In a WebQuest, students follow an electronic map or take an online tour, moving from one web resource to the next to gather information and learn about a particular topic. Like I always said that teachers need to be “fresh ”, we need to keep finding good websites and use WebQuest to lead our students to get benefits from these websites.

Here is a video which is named “What's AWebquest?” Let’s see how 1^st and 2^nd grades students think about WebQuest.

Questions:

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

2.              What are WebQuests, virtual field trips, and videoconferencing?

3.              What should we do to help our students use Internet correctly?