Interactive Whiteboards

Bell, Mary Ann. (2002). Teachers.Net Gazzette. Why Use an Interactive Whiteboard? A Baker's Dozen Reasons. Retrieved March 25, 2010 from

http://teachers.net/gazette/JAN02/mabell.html

This article explained what interactive white boards are and why they are a great tool to use for educators both in younger students and older students.

Dr. Mary Ann Bell gave 12 reasons why she thinks interactive white boards are a great tool. I am going to give my top reasons from her 12 to tell you why I think an interactive white board should be used in school.

1. It is great for showing how to do stuff step-by-step. In my high school Pre-Calculus class our teacher had a smart board and it had a graphing calculator in it. She would pull it up and it would be really big on the screen. She would then show us how to do something step-by-step on our calculators. This was extremely easy to follow along with because she was doing it where everyone could see exactly what button she was pushing.

2. It is a great tool for facilitating in how children learn. Some learn visually, some audioally, and some learn by doing. With a smart board a teacher can target all three learning styles. Visually because images can be put on the board. Audioally it could be good for like a literature class or something because you can find audio files of stories or plays being read by somebody. A child who learns by doing can actually come up to the smart board and click on things, write things, etc.

3. It is cost effective. It is a lot of money at first to buy the board, and projector and all that but in the end, it saves the school money. They can have one computer for a class instead of having

30 or so individual computers for each student. All of the students can interact and participate in using the interactive white board.

4. Interactive White Boards are clean. There is no need for custodians to go to every single classroom every single night to clean the boards. They have so much other things to worry about. Also with chalk boards, there is so much dust that comes with those. Also not to mention if people have allergies to chalk it would be hard to use. Even with white boards with the markers, those smell and can give people headaches. A smart board doesn't have any smell or doesn't leave any residue.

5. Kids love it! Children of all ages love to use the interactive white board. If students like to use something in education think of all we could teach them because they will actually be listening and paying attention to what is going on in class.

Interactive white boards are a great thing in general and if funding is available each school should buy them for their classrooms. The article only listed 12 reasons why interactive white boards are a good idea, but there are so many more possibilities that haven't even been thought of yet!

Studies Suggest Cyber Bullying is on the Rise

eSchool News. (2007). Studies Suggest Cyber Bullying is on the Rise. eschoolnews. Retrieved March 18, 2010 from http://www.eschoolnews.com/2007/12/04/studies-suggest-cyber-bullying-is-on-the-rise/

This article was all about cyber bullying. One study found out that 2/3 adolescents have been cyber bullied at least once. That is a really high number. Another study found out that only 1/10 adolescents have ever been cyber bullied. It all depends on how you define what cyber bullying is. It also depends on what the adolescent thinks. Some students that are bullied online are not really affected by it. It doesn't really bother them. To some students though, it can bring some serious damages.

In 2006 a 13 year old girl committed suicide from cyber bullying. She was communicating with this guy online who would always flirt with her. One day he decided that he was not going to speak with her anymore because he found out she was mean. This really devastated the girl and she ended up committing suicide. As it turns out, there was no boy. It was a mom of some other girl from school who was only pretending to be a boy flirting with her. No charges were pressed against the mom because there was no law at the time that she broke. After this girl's death though, they have made cyber bullying a misdemeanor in the state of Missouri.

I find this article really shocking. I personally have never experienced cyber bullying at all. This is so sad that this has to happen to people so young. Middle school age kids are going through all different kinds of emotions and to be bullied online only makes life tough for them. Also the mom that pretended to be that boy is horrible. Why would a mother ever want to do that? That is so childish and mean. This is a big problem and we need to figure out ways to try to stop this bullying.

Make Way for Wikis

Oatman, E. (2005). Make Way for Wikis. School Library Journal. Retrieved March 10, 2010 from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6277799.html

This article was all about wikis. They mentioned the ways that some teachers are using them now. In an elementary school in New York, Sarah Chauncey, the school's media specialist made wikis for 6 classes of 3rd graders. They will use the wikis to write drafts and to collaborate on what they want to include in the school's newspaper. In a school in California, a world history class published their own history on the Holocaust on a wiki. The state of Virginia is receiving a grant from Microsoft to create a virtual wiki community. These are just some of the way that teachers are using wikis to help facilitate learning.

The article also talked about how wikis work. Wikis were created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham. He invented it so other programmers could efficiently share information. One does not need to be a programmer to use it. It is very user-friendly. Some of the wikis are free to use, which is a good thing in education. The one's that are not free are not that expensive. They are usually around $5 a month.

The other half of the article was about wikipedia and the argument of being a good resource and tool for students or not being a good source for reliable information. Many scholarly people do not believe that wikipedia belongs in the schools as a place for students to get information for research. Some say it is, "poorly written, incomplete, and inaccurate." Others are for it. They say that the errors are caught soon and are quickly fixed, and that most users do not even see these inaccuracies because they are fixed so soon.

As a future teacher I think that wikipedia can be used for general research like if a student wants to find something out real quick. For a research paper though I would want them to use scholarly information like journals. Schools pay thousands of dollars a year for access to these journals and students should take advantage of this. All the journals are scholarly and were edited for correct information.

On the other hand I think the wiki pages are good to use in the classroom. It can be used in many different ways that would be beneficial to the learning environment. One way that I can think of is having students type up their papers in the wikis then the other students can peer edit their papers. The students can receive feedback on how to improve their papers, or they can get their grammatical errors fixed. I think wikis are a good thing and we will be seeing them used more and more throughout the schools of the United States.

Mobile Technology Goes to School

Bafile, C. (2009). Education World. Mobile Technology Goes to School. Retrieved March 5, 2010 from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech248.shtml

Matt Cook is a 5th grade teacher at Trinity Meadows Intermediate School in Keller Texas. He noticed that a lot of kids were using their phones in school. Instead of figuring out ways to keep the phones out of school he figured out a way to use them in school. He had to write to many different companies to try to support this program. Verizon Wireless supports the service, HTC donates the phones, and Microsoft Mobile helps with the software issues.

How does using cell phones in school help the students? They complete many different assignments from home and e-mail them to Mr. Cook. Also the kids can e-mail him questions from home if they have questions about the homework. In school he encourages the students to take pictures of their scientific discoveries in the lab. They can also make PowerPoint's from school, sketch pictures with a new application.

How does he make sure that his students are doing the work and not texting or goofing off? The phones are not voice or text enabled. This way they are only to be used educationally.

I think this is a great thing. Students are able to communicate so much more with their teacher. In high school, you could e-mail a question to the teacher and hope they reply to you before the next class period. This way there is a guarantee that the teacher will reply to you because phones are so small and you can carry them with you whever you go. I think phones in the classroom are a good thing because it makes teacher/student relationships stronger but in a safe and healthy way.