listenup

Technology in the classroom will be one area I plan on keeping updated. As a social studies major I believe that the globalization of the classroom will only improve the students capacity to learn. With the many different programs available to the teachers such as “web-quest” and Trackstar I definitely see these as an improvement to my curriculum. I found many helpful and easy ways to integrate this into lesson plans as I am currently enrolled in SST for elementary teaching.
I did visit my local MAISD office on line but could not find any seminars on integrating technology into the classroom, this system I hope is just not operating today. In today’s world of technology I believe that teaching social studies will only be greatly improved by the opportunities of communication the internet affords both the student and teachers. I know I will use many of the virtual field trips and will integrate the programs available through the many different museum sites.
One very simple way to keep abreast on new technology in the classroom is to use your Google alert to send articles to your e-mail. This will help to see what new technology is available and will also give you reviews from people that have used many of the new programs.

This web sit on MLK is a web site that shows you how untrue information is easily available on the web and how important it is to teach our children how to evaluate the information. If you look to see who is sponsoring this web site you will find that the name is Stormfront and is a white nationalist community. If you Google MLK you will find this website on page one number six with the information stating “The truth about Martin Luther King: Includes historical trivia, articles and pictures. A valuable resource for teachers and students alike”. If you Google the URL you will find a different definition “Attacking Dr. King as a corrupt communist, under the control of a Marxist Jewish conspiracy. As teachers we should be aware and ready to teach our children the importance of evaluating information not only from websites, but form books, newspapers, and other forms of media.

I defiantly believe that there are many ways to teach or convey information to students to help in their learning process. Unfortunately my own background in learning was that of the 1960’s which dealt mainly with ingestion of information from a teacher and rote learning, but never really understanding how to process the information I had acquired. I see the constructivist point of view as that of learning how and where to acquire information, evaluating that information and leaning how to use the information in more than one area of study.
With all the information that is now available to students via web access I believe that students must learn to question the validity of that information and learn to decipher what is most valuable to the student.
I have been able to see the results of constructivist teaching in a classroom environment and believe that this style tremendously helps students acquire, process, and summarize the task at hand. There are many different lesson plans available for teachers to develop this type of learning. One that I particularly like is called “jigsaw learning”. This plan is designed for the students to become the experts on a particular subject once they have completed their investigation (from sources that the teachers has helped to provide) the students present to smaller groups of students their knowledge and also receive new information that the other expert group has acquired.
While on web quest this week I found another helpful program that I would definitely use to help my student develop their investigative skills. http://php.indiana.edu/~kdharper/introduction.htm
This is a great program for learning in a constructivist style with dividing into groups and letting the children present the information they have developed. I believe that people who criticize the constructivist view of learning think that the teacher is not helping to build on the information that is be taught. This is in my opinion completely wrong. I believe that the teacher must put more time and energy in to preparing and helping to analyze the information that the students are receiving and in turn the students develop a critical step in processing and storing the information and also learn how to cross-reference this information when need for different situations that arise.