Education in the World of Misinformation
Educating students has become even harder as a result of the vast amount of misinformation available in this digital era. Now that massive information on any topic is only a google away, doing real research in books is becoming seemingly obsolete amongst the high school students I work with. I too rely on google for things such as definitions and phone numbers that I used to look up in books. That being said, I do not think enough is being done to demonstrate to students the importance of old fashioned research from books or cross referencing your Internetsources. I finally understand why my college professors required both Internet and hard copy sources for our research papers.
Its obvious that the Internet provides a wealth of information that can be accessed at any time and it is now the job of parents and teachers to come together to help children with how to discern between what is good and what is bad. All children should know from any early age that the anyone can put something on the Internet, and just because you can google it does not mean it is a fact. Several times I have had to explain to 7th graders that websites frequently contain faulty information, and can be put online by anyone. Students need to know how to filter information and the importance of cross referencing to verify the information they are using. As educators, we all want our students to learn, and Internet resources are wonderful learning tools as long as they are used to learn the correct information. So we all need to teach young students, and continually remind older students to sort through the data smog and info garbage, and get to the valid facts.
Ways to use Excel in Education
It was amazing to me to see some of the different uses of excel as an educational tool in the classroom. Prior to class on Wednesday, I had only used excel to organize my gradebook and supply orders. The idea of using excel as a quadrant game to reveal vocabulary words, creating formulas and practicing basic skills such as basic multiplication tables help the technology make lessons come alive. The basic graphing program that we were introduced to made me wish that I had been able to learn on a program like that at a young age, and by working with that basic program I would be able to better understand some of the more complicated parts of excel that are beyond my basic knowledge. I am excited at the idea of becoming more familiar with a program such as excel because it opens a realm of possibilities for use in the classroom beyond the basics. My father will provide an excellent resource for any questions I have related to excel, because due to his business experience he uses excel all the time to complete projects and knows the majority of functions in the program.
Fast Paced Technology
It absolutely amazed me that in Pittsford students are required to be proficient at typing before they reach the 7th grade. I remember going through school and not even being offered a keyboarding class till reaching the 9th grade. Also, comparing the Pittsford standard with that of the district I work in, where some students have never even learned the basics of using a computer and are in high school. The differences between the technological capabilities of students is something that I worry will directly affect their future. In today’s digital era, it seems that one must possess at the very least a basic knowledge of office programs and email to be successful.
I was also shocked at the availability of free office related programs for download. With these programs, a cheap, basic computer can be upgraded with similar programs to the Microsoft office programs without the high cost of those programs. I would be interested to see the capabilities that these free programs have and compare them to the Microsoft programs. Upon a basic analysis of the free google word processing programs, the only major difference I found was in the number of fonts available. I cannot wait to get a refresher of some of the bells and whistles of the Microsoft office programs, so I know how to better use them, and when my students use the programs for writing their research papers, I will be better equipped to assist them.
Education in the Digital Era
As we begin learning new technologies to implement in the classroom, I find myself reflecting upon my own experiences with education as a student. The time period I think about most is my high school years because I currently teach in a school that has grades 7-12. I constantly find myself comparing the experiences I had as a teenager in the mid 1990s with the experiences of my current students. After learning the Inspiration program, I felt as though it would have helped me so much during my own high school education. As a visual learner, the program would have assisted with classes that I struggled in such as math. After learning Inspiration, I also wondered how it could assist my students for not only brainstorming activities in my Studio Art classes, but also in their other classes. As an educator it excites me to see programs that assist in learning and make it fun, however application in the classroom becomes difficult when schools do not have a lot of computers for students to work.
New technologies in the field of art continue to excite me both as an artist and an educator. Programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash give artists and students endless ways to manipulate images with the click of a mouse. Also, as the field of Graphic Design continues to grow, the knowledge of such programs can lead students to successful careers.
