Blog 4

The meaning of technological literacy relates to an intense debate among educators and policymakers about the state of reading in today's computer-based society. In Chapter 5, the textbook discuss about e-Books and e-readers found interesting to me. The growth of e-books and e-reader technology shows how the Internet is dramatically affecting the reading activities of many youngsters. The potential for e-books and e-readers seems great. One survey found that 40% of 1,200 e-reader buyers were spending more time reading now than they had before with print books. Parents, on the other hand, tended to assume that electronic or digital books have a negative impact on children's desire to read. Despite a lot of researches of increasing percentage of e-books and e-readers, I'm still familiar with using hard copy of the books and still need to print out and read. Starting of this semester, I was debating myself whether I should by e-book version of textbooks for my classes. First, it was cheaper than regular textbook. Second, I didn't have time to stop by the bookstore and it would take longer for me to get it by mail. However, put all that reasons behind, I ended up purchasing a regular textbooks for my classes. At some point in the future, I'll probably start using e-books but until I become fluent in technology, I'll probably enjoy flipping pages, take notes and highlighting on the book.

Cyberbullying is "willful and repeated harm through the use of computers, cell phones and other electronic equipment." Cyberbullying is another thing that caught my attention from Chapter 5. So far, mostly we talked about technology in good ways. It motivates students' learning and important tools for teachers to teach. However, bullying and cyberbulling have a negative and lasting impact on academic performance. Between one in three and one in five students have been victims of cyberbullies and consequences for victims of bullying and cyberbulling can include depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, poor school performance, and suicidal tendencies. I've heard about cyberbulling in the past but never realized how serious it was until I read from the textbooks and especially it's happening in schools and young kids were engaging. As a future teacher, it is important to develop good materials and activities using technology but for me, it would be more important to know what's happening in my classroom and to my students and to figure out the solutions if such activities going around and anybody suffering from it. I know it would be all different in a real life and it will probably be a lot different than what I expect, however, I think one of the most important role other than teaching knowledge, in my opinion, it is also important to teach ethics and how to become a good citizens would be another most important role for teachers.

Webquest and virtual field trips are the technological teaching tools that I would probably use in the future classroom and Chapter 6, explains more about the two. The thing that I like about webquest activity, many webquest use a cooperative learning model in which different students do different tasks. Giving different roles to members of a webquest team provides teachers with a way to use everyone's learning strengths. Within the same activity, teachers can differentiate instructions for students with different needs. 

Virtual field trips is another activity that I really like. Virtual field trips take students to places all over the world without ever reading their classroom or school computer lab. It would attract students' attention for any age group. For me, as my concentration is in Social Studies, it would be a great tool to show students different places of the world rather than just showing pictures or explain about it. We all remember excitement night before the field trip, like going on a field trip, even though it's through a screen, students would be excited to see all different places that they never been before.

Questions:

1. Would there be a fun ways or ways to teach bullying and cyberbulling to students effective way?

2. As a teacher, how would you control students' web searching and teach which websites to rely on for their work?

3. Any cons for virtual field trips activity?