ch 7

Chapter seven is a very broad chapter!!! Covering topics such as blogs, virtual tours, international pen pals, chat rooms, web quests, then the Internet and much more. The main ideas behind all the tech talk were the most profound. The idea of application for intention, not use for use. The fact that this book finally hinted at this idea brought a smile to my face. The most profound topic was left to the final sentences of this chapter. The idea that it is more important to teach the topic of intent than spends the majority of the time teaching the technology. When a technology becomes more of a hinder to education than help then it must be set aside for the greater good of the children.
Another topic that was raised in this chapter was the discussion that children must be educated on how to use chat rooms and blogs safely. The same as one would teach their children to look both ways before they cross the street. So to should parents and teachers should teach the children how to safely use the Internet. There are a lot of risks out there but students can be protected by proper education and supervisor awareness.
The more superficial topics of this chapter were the applications of spreadsheets, databases and the Internet. The idea is that no longer is the library the primary source of information. One can now log onto the Internet, log into a database somewhere and retrieve just about anything they had interest in knowing. Company’s can create databases. I’m sure the Vatican library has an amazing database. (If we could only get access). Some databases are shared and some are private. Each serves the function of housing massive amounts of information and indexing the information for easy access.
I did not know that there were bots that categorized ever-new web page. Computers crawling from web page to web page posting the sites to the search engines, Amazing.
In recap, there are thousands of things you can do to help children learn. But keeping education safe, fun and informative is the job of an educator.