Week 17 Article Reflections

Article Title: Blogs Are Not the Enemy
Article Source: Tech Learning
Weblink: http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604374
Reflection:
Many teachers oppose using blogging in the classroom. They do not understand why an educator would want to use blogging, how it benefits the students, or how it engages students in the learning process. However, there are many useful methods of incorporating blogging into the curriculum. Blogging can be very time consuming for the students and for teachers to grade, but the power of blogging comes through the conversation threads that it creates. Teachers can present a topic, a student writes to the topic, another student reads that comment and reflects on the topic and what the first student said about it, and so on. Many ideas can be generated by viewing what other people think about concepts. To ensure that students are using blogging in a useful manner the teacher should encourage the students to write meaningful comments that generate other ideas, include a hyperlink within the post, share information about yourself, to criticize kindly, and to remember the power of words. Teachers may also want to use a tracking service to keep the blogging clean and also to track the usage of the blogging site.

Article Title: The One-to-One Tsunami
Article Source: Tech Learning
Weblink: http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604373
Reflection:
The education world as we know it is changing right before our eyes. Pioneers in the technology , Australia's Methodist Ladies' College in Melbourne, rolled out the first One-to-One program back in 1990. The world viewed this as a luxy for only the elite, but today, if educators are not moving to work towards this, than they will find themselves on the wrong side of the technology divide in the world. For educators to be successful with a One-to-One program, they must have a well-managed and thoughtfully approached classroom program in which each student has a "digital assistant". This One-to-One process helps students to acquire and manipulate more information quicker and more efficiently. This helps to stimulate higher-order thinking and creativity. Also, when each student has their own personal computer, the students have more time on task with research, writing, and presentating because they can take the computer to school, home, and where ever else they need to take it. Although many schools would love to adopt a program such as this, funding is not always available. Schools should explore funding options within their district as soon as possible because students and teachers will definitely benefit from a program such as One-to-One.