I remember using lots of spreadsheets when I was in elementary school, but it's an art that sort of died out as I went through school. Coming into University, I never used spreadsheets at all.
It's weird how useful a tool it us, but that it isn't really used at all. It could be because I was more of a social studies major, but it seemed that spreadsheets disappeared as a useful tool regardless.
Using them in class today brought back a lot of those memories. It used to be a bit more difficult to make a graph when I was a kid! What a useful tool for a classroom, although it would still take some coaching for younger students. This would be a great way of visually representing some data and having students understand graphs.
Something I'll have to keep in mind!
The internet as we know is sort of like the Wild West. It has changing rules and frontiers all the time, and just when you think you start getting used it, something changes.
As adults, we are all used to these shifting boundaries, and know a little bit about protecting ourselves. I think the realization this class was that student's simply wont be as prepared for this new society as adults would be.
It's strange to think, because kids often times seem to adapt easier to the technological world and teach us adults things we didn't know. For example, running the smart board eraser around the whole board, then tapping the middle with it erases everything. You don't need to simply run the "brush" up and down. And I learned that from a student!
Despite this edge in technological know-how, students are still somewhat naive in how they approach the internet. This class revealed a lot about how students need to be informed about things such as marketing and advertising, safety, authenticity and copyright rules.
I guess as teachers we had better slap on a sheriffs badge and get to patrolling and laying down the law, because that seems to be the best way to help kids get used to this new frontier.
Throughout my University career, it was hammered into me that using a search engine to find research was not the best idea. In fact, professors could and would fail you for citing a non-educational source.
It almost seemed foreign to be allowed to use a multitude of search engines to find activities for students to learn from. But when you get going, Oh the sources you can find! Of course, each page needs to be gone through to check for virus's or bad software, but overall there were some extremely good websites available through a simple internet search.
It's also good to know that their are a variety of search engines that are educationally related. Having websites like Onekey and Kids Click makes for a safer classroom environment. I think it would be interesting to find a good search engine that you can keep tabs on as a teacher.
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