Lessons Learned

One thing that is so great about all of this technology is that many resources are available online, in books, and there are even workshops that you can attend to learn more. The information is easily accessible if you are truly interested in learning about new technology. And how great is it that University of Minnesota researchers have found educational benefits concerning facebook and myspace! YES! I can use this as an excuse to get on facebook more often. From reading these articles and watching these videos it has really made me wonder about what kind of technology I will be using in my future classroom. I know that some schools are behind, but hopefully I will be able to use the newest technologies to teach my students and not bore them to death.

I have also realized that it is important that students learn about these technologies at an early age because they will most likely be using them for the rest of their life no matter what occupation they go into.

Concerning the disconnect of personal and school writing, I believe that when students write on a computer it is completely different than what they would be writing on a piece of paper. When students use the computer they are usually multi-tasking. They have more than one window open, they are chatting with their friends, looking up scores for the baseball game and probably texting 3 people. I think that multi-tasking is a great skill to have, but it can really affect the quality of someone's writing. I think that texting and instant messaging is affecting young people's social skills--they can't carry on a conversation with someone in real life. It also affects their grammar and sentence structure. If I ever see "LOL" or "JK" on any papers in my classroom, the student will get lecture from me.