Focus Question

What are search engines and how do they work?

Search engines retrieve information from the internet using keywords. They are also able to go through millions of web pages to locate topic-related websites at a high speed. Teachers and students benefit from search tools that focus more directly on academic topics, educational standards, and learning material.

Photo credit to Michael Johnson

Summary

Chapter five focuses on how teachers and students can use and analyze the powerful took known as the internet. It is extremely important that everyone, especially future educators know how to access and assess information. The capacity to access and assess information online is known as information literacy. The standards of what students need to know have changed greatly through out the years. The national council of teachers of English (NCTE) has issued its own definition of the skills students will need in the future, called 21^st- century literacies. Students will need to learn a handful of new technology-based literacies. Search engines will be a tool that every student will need to know how to use proficiently. A search engine is a software program that uses networks of computers to access information about a topic from its databases. Search engines are a great tool for school work espically when it comes to research. When I was in middle and highschool my peers and I would hand write out our notes but today they are now incorporating electronic note taking. This tool uses computer technologies to organize and expedite note taking. While taking notes online it is extremely important to determine the accuracy of the information you are reviewing. Quantity does not always mean quality, so often internet searcher must shift through pages of wrong information to find the valid data. As a future educator it will be my job to help my students understand the different types of academic content resources that they will find online. It will be my job to teach them about the information contained in web addresses and about the concept of cognitive load. With such easy access to the internet now, students tend to find plagiarism easier. The direct copying and misrepresenting of someone else’s work is considered plagiarism. The three main factors that contribute to plagiarism today are; the web, high-stakes testing, and misassumptions by students. Some schools check plagrism by using services such as http://turnitin.com/ ,http://www.ithenticate.com/, canexus.com.Teachers should make students aware of plagrism and how it can be avoided.

                    The video below explains the top ten reasons  why to use techonology in education.

 "Teachers will not be replaced by technology, but teachers who don't use technology will be replaced by those who do."    Sheryl Nussbaum- Beach

 

 

Tech Tool Question

The tech-tool link I checked out from chapter five was Flickr. Flickr allows for people to upload, discover, and share photos. This could be a great resource that would add to visual learning resources to a classroom curriculum. After looking through the webpage I found it to be very similar to Instagram and a little bit like Pinterest. On Flickr you are able to create discussion boards which would be useful for communicating with colleague and picture sharing. Flickr can serve many different purposes such as: making cards, making photo books, slideshows, calendars, and postage stamps. The web-page is very easy to navigate. I would consider using this site in the future.