| Everyone can use a little help at some
time. This section is devoted to those of you who are working hard at integrating
technology into your classroom but would like some extra hints on things
to try and some thought provoking information.
You may think that all software is the same. Well
in some respects you're correct, but it often depends on the age level
that you are working with. Typically, most software manufacturer's are
making "age appropriate" programs. Designers have created
younger, less complicated versions of highly complex packages, such
as Microsoft's Homepage. Most software programs will either print the
age level directly on the box or else they will clearly indicate it
in a description in a catalog.
With any software program that you choose, make
sure that you look through it to find any hidden cultural or gender
biases. Perhaps you don't believe that there's bias in many computer
programs? Pull up any art program and look at its clip art file. As
you flip through the clip art, you'll find that most of the pictures
are of white males having fun while females and minorities are typically
in such roles as basketball players, secretaries and emotional scenes.
Be aware of the type of messages that you are sending to your students
by using the biased programs. You may want to even discuss it with your
students prior to it.
Many teachers feel threatened when their students
know more about a program than they do. There is no magic wand that
can be waved in the air to make this fear suddenly disappear, but it
may help to realize that having these students can be turned into a
large benefit. Part of your lesson could involve having students learn
a particular aspect of the program and in a short presentation explain
it to the rest of the class. Typically, this method is used for beginner
or introduction computer classes. For more advanced classes, you can
have students who know more about the program your working with circulate
to help other students or even have them help teach the class. This
also helps to maintain classroom management in the computer lab by having
students help each other rather than constantly trying to deal with
problems.
SOFTWARE REVIEWS:
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Many of the teacher's that I've spoken with said
that the best thing they ever did was to find out who was already already
working with technology in their classroom. By talking with these people,
teachers were able to work with them to help develop ideas and lessons
for their own subjects. For instance, if you have a technology coordinator,
they may have ideas on where you can locate information to help you
further develop your projects. Some districts are lucky enough to have
a technology integration specialist (you may want to talk to various
people in your school district to find out if you have one) who specializes
in helping teachers combine their subjects and the technology available
in the district.
Perhaps your school is lacking in technology or
coordinators? Is it a funding problem? If it is you might be able to
get past those funding issues by applying for a grant. Grants can come
from federal, local or even private organizations. You can find more
information on grants under funding.
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Once you have ideas on how to integrate technology
into your curricula, you may be thinking about having your students
go online for research. First, you'll need to make sure you know the
District's internet policy. This is typically a form which is sent home
at the beginning of the year to parents. For most districts, it is required
that the parent sign the permission form for their child to be able
to access the internet. Also, this policy states what the student can
and can't do on the internet. You need to be aware of what restrictions
this places on what your students when you want them to search for something.
For instance, some schools have what is called "Nanny" software.
This is a program which prevents students from accessing certain sites,
such as pornographic sites or any site relating to sex, either
on purpose or by accident from school.
Once familiar with the schools internet policy,
you need to be aware of the immense amount of information on the internet
which you're students will have to sifted through to find the required
information. One of the main things that you'll need to discuss with
your students before freeing them onto the internet is how to discriminate
between a reliable source, such as an online journal, and an unreliable
one, such as someone's homepage. One of the easiest ways for students
to determine reliability is to look at the page's sponsor or author
which is normally found on the "main" or "homepage"
of the current page the student is looking at. Alright, that's nice.
But how do you get to the "main" page if your student is on
some other page? Well, most every reliable page will have a link on
it back to the "main" page. Simply click on that and the student
will be able to find out about the author(s) of the page(s).
Of course you can totally avoid using search engines
by bookmarking specific sites that you want them to use before the class.
Or, you can create a webpage for them to reference to which will provide
them with the links for the lesson. This of course is easier if you
have a larger computer lab and you don't want to go to each computer
to bookmark the sites. The downside of this is that the information
will be limited only to those sites which you have pre-screened and
you will be spending a lot of preparation time before each lesson finding
sites.
Below are a list of various search engines. If your
school is worried about students accessing "adult" sites,
I would strongly recommend yahoolgians which is a search site specifically
designed for younger students:
SEARCH SITES:
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