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#1. Yes I am computer literate.
#2. No, I do not only use a textbook to teach my students.
#3. The kid seems like a brat.
#4. The parents need to cut his hair.
Students don't realize that the internet is not reliable. Teachers need to teach them that they have to assess the source they get their information from. The internet is only useful if you know enough to sort the wheat from the chaff.
As far as facebook and twitter, they're a waste of time and useless WRT education (okay, farmville is an ok way to destress...). My last school had us tweeting and on facebook only to declare, this year that teachers should not friend students .
And I'll second that the kid's a brat and I'm glad I'm not his teacher.
Personally, I find computers too much of a distraction. When we do go to the computer lab, I have to chase kids off of game sites, music sites, email accounts, and a slew of other sites they aren't supposed to be on. I think the internet is ok to use if you have a specific application or goal in mind but it becomes baby sitting if they have free access to the internet. Even when I tell them what site they are supposed to be on, I'll catch them with multiple windows open that aren't part of the assignment.
I do use the internet for videos (The Annenburg site is a great resource for educational videos), for simulation applets, to find lesson plans (I admit it...I do a Harry Wang...gimme...gimme...gimme, lol) and to research different ways of presenting topics and finding demos. I use powerpoint and a smart board in my classroom. Assuming I have this job next year, I'll convert my power point presentations to smart presentations for next year. I LOVE that I can record myself giving the presentation and then put it up for students to review. That should end students standing at my desk, one minute before class, asking "I wasn't here yesterday, what did I miss?" as if I can give them in one minute what took 50 minutes to deliver to the class .
A computer is a tool. The internet is a tool. In this day and age, I think it's to your benefit to know how to use them but I also think you can be a great teacher without them. Me, I'm still learning the ropes so I lean, heavily, on every resource I have available to me and the internet is one.
I use the internet every day in class. I take classes every summer in our district's instructional technology lab. I have a class website that I use to post copies of documents for class. If students lose the copy I give them, they can go online and get a copy. There are links to all the internet activities that we do in class, plus I added links to YouTube videos that my district has blocked so that students can access them from home. The number one source for educational videos these days is YouTube, but our district still blocks everything from their site.
I was great about keeping it up for the first semester. Then I got sick and I got behind, and the first thing to go was the website. The students weren't using it, and it got hard to justify the time that it took to update and upload. One of the downsides of teaching in a low-income school is that many of my students don't have computers or internet access outside of school. I'm hoping to spend part of the summer getting things ready for next year by putting up the units for the second semester. The first part is up and going, and I plan to re-instate my rule that I will not give duplicates of hand-outs.
Another glitch is that one of my two classroom computers finally died. I had my students using an online course from Carnegie Mellon University until it was no longer practical. One classroom computer wasn't enough, and the computer labs were all used for state test tutorials since early February. Over half of my students have been pulled out for most of the last two months. You'd think they would like being able to keep up online, but they won't even try.
In the meanwhile, all the core subject teachers got four new computers each and they are in the process of receiving smart boards, with or without the training. As I've posted before, the teacher next door got hers two years ago. It still has a sign taped on it "Do not write on board". It's never been used. She can't even check her own e-mail--the students have to do it for her. (--sigh--) One of my students, and even the assistant principal, remarked that I should be getting a smart board, but I'm still limping along with an obsolete panel projector on top of my trusty overhead. I have a wire web running from my computer, the tv, the dvd/vcr, and the projectors that even confuses ME when I have to set it back up every year. I yearn resentfully whenever I pass my neighbor's room and see her writing on the little bit of white board next to the pristine smart board. I try not to let it get to me, as I accept that as a non-tested subject, my class needs are relatively unimportant. I am galled, however, to see that valuable materials are being wasted through non-use.
So, I do agree with the message of this video. But the video itself is inexcusably rude in tone.
I use the internet every day in class. I take classes every summer in our district's instructional technology lab. I have a class website that I use to post copies of documents for class. If students lose the copy I give them, they can go online and get a copy. There are links to all the internet activities that we do in class, plus I added links to YouTube videos that my district has blocked so that students can access them from home. The number one source for educational videos these days is YouTube, but our district still blocks everything from their site.
I was great about keeping it up for the first semester. Then I got sick and I got behind, and the first thing to go was the website. The students weren't using it, and it got hard to justify the time that it took to update and upload. One of the downsides of teaching in a low-income school is that many of my students don't have computers or internet access outside of school. I'm hoping to spend part of the summer getting things ready for next year by putting up the units for the second semester. The first part is up and going, and I plan to re-instate my rule that I will not give duplicates of hand-outs.
Another glitch is that one of my two classroom computers finally died. I had my students using an online course from Carnegie Mellon University until it was no longer practical. One classroom computer wasn't enough, and the computer labs were all used for state test tutorials since early February. Over half of my students have been pulled out for most of the last two months. You'd think they would like being able to keep up online, but they won't even try.
In the meanwhile, all the core subject teachers got four new computers each and they are in the process of receiving smart boards, with or without the training. As I've posted before, the teacher next door got hers two years ago. It still has a sign taped on it "Do not write on board". It's never been used. She can't even check her own e-mail--the students have to do it for her. (--sigh--) One of my students, and even the assistant principal, remarked that I should be getting a smart board, but I'm still limping along with an obsolete panel projector on top of my trusty overhead. I have a wire web running from my computer, the tv, the dvd/vcr, and the projectors that even confuses ME when I have to set it back up every year. I yearn resentfully whenever I pass my neighbor's room and see her writing on the little bit of white board next to the pristine smart board. I try not to let it get to me, as I accept that as a non-tested subject, my class needs are relatively unimportant. I am galled, however, to see that valuable materials are being wasted through non-use.
So, I do agree with the message of this video. But the video itself is inexcusably rude in tone.
While I think teachers should be computer literate, I think the internet is a distraction to students. I find that many cannot stay on task. Instead of spending my time helping them with the task I planned for the day, I spend my time checking to see who has game windows and emails open behind the window they're supposed to be working on. In my last school, I gave up and just started doing internet activities on my projector. I kept getting reprimanded because my kids were going on non school approved sites when we used the computers. I find it hard to baby sit 35 computers at one time while helping the kids who actually try to do the assignment
#1. Yes I am computer literate.
#2. No, I do not only use a textbook to teach my students.
#3. The kid seems like a brat.
#4. The parents need to cut his hair.
LOL. This was pretty much my reaction. I was expecting more angry responses, but I'm posting in an Internet forum where we're all at least somewhat computer literate! I wonder if YouTube was the best choice of venue for this guy to express his feelings. The people he intends to reach probably aren't watching YouTube in the first place, though there are some interesting comments below the video.
Students don't realize that the internet is not reliable. Teachers need to teach them that they have to assess the source they get their information from. The internet is only useful if you know enough to sort the wheat from the chaff.
As far as facebook and twitter, they're a waste of time and useless WRT education (okay, farmville is an ok way to destress...). My last school had us tweeting and on facebook only to declare, this year that teachers should not friend students .
And I'll second that the kid's a brat and I'm glad I'm not his teacher.
Personally, I find computers too much of a distraction. When we do go to the computer lab, I have to chase kids off of game sites, music sites, email accounts, and a slew of other sites they aren't supposed to be on. I think the internet is ok to use if you have a specific application or goal in mind but it becomes baby sitting if they have free access to the internet. Even when I tell them what site they are supposed to be on, I'll catch them with multiple windows open that aren't part of the assignment.
I do use the internet for videos (The Annenburg site is a great resource for educational videos), for simulation applets, to find lesson plans (I admit it...I do a Harry Wang...gimme...gimme...gimme, lol) and to research different ways of presenting topics and finding demos. I use powerpoint and a smart board in my classroom. Assuming I have this job next year, I'll convert my power point presentations to smart presentations for next year. I LOVE that I can record myself giving the presentation and then put it up for students to review. That should end students standing at my desk, one minute before class, asking "I wasn't here yesterday, what did I miss?" as if I can give them in one minute what took 50 minutes to deliver to the class .
A computer is a tool. The internet is a tool. In this day and age, I think it's to your benefit to know how to use them but I also think you can be a great teacher without them. Me, I'm still learning the ropes so I lean, heavily, on every resource I have available to me and the internet is one.
Ivory, does your school have a technology director? He or she could easily block the kinds of websites you speak of. You might want to bring that up to someone because it [i]is[i] annoying when kids spend the period Tweeting! At my last school, students started using proxy servers to get around that, then those were blocked. Problem solved.
Ivory, does your school have a technology director? He or she could easily block the kinds of websites you speak of. You might want to bring that up to someone because it [i]is[i] annoying when kids spend the period Tweeting! At my last school, students started using proxy servers to get around that, then those were blocked. Problem solved.
We do but they haven't blocked everything. The kids still find game sites and can still get on email sites. They can't get on Facebook or Twitter. Still they find lots of things to do besides the assignment in question.
They also don't seem to realize that cut and paste is plagerism. I spend, countless hours googling phrases when I suspect a student just cut and pasted. IMO, the internet is more of a nuisance than a help. It makes cheating easy because it's difficult for the teacher to figure out if something was just copied.
I found this an annoying video - not thought provoking, just annoying. We have tons of technology in our schools including smart boards in every classroom and laptop's available whenever needed. Do all the teachers integrate it into their classes? Who knows. My son is more technologically savvy then most of his teachers, but I don't think that matters in most of his classes. That's not what he needs them to teach him.
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). My last school had us tweeting and on facebook only to declare, this year that teachers should not friend students 
.
