The Partnership for 21st century Skills website provides a massive amount of information in the area of teaching 21st skills to our students. It is organized and has many links that give us access to other websites. While I was exploring the “Tools & Resources”, under ICT Literacy link, I came across many websites that provide free courses and lessons for people around the world who want to learn about using the computer in many different ways such as using softwares, designing websites, computer programming, etc. Moreover, what delighted me most are the examples and the videos or “snapshots” of 21st century skills that took place in some classrooms. In addition, I could not find anything on the website that I could disagree with. My duty as an educator is to start incorporating the 21st century skills, which provide the students with the necessary skills to collaborate with other groups from around the world.
I encourage everyone to visit this website http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ and explore it.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Use Blog in the Classroom
After I gained knowledge about blogs, I found it as an amazing tool to use to post homework assignments, school/ class events, or any class-related information. That would leave no excuse for students not to do their homework if they are absent from school. In addition, it is a useful tool to involve parents in their children’s lives because high elementary students and so forth do not usually involve their parents in their school lives or what they learning about in their classes. Moreover, blogging enhances communication between teachers/students or among students. Blogging helps the teachers learn how their students think because some students are too shy to share their ideas in front of their classmates. If I had a permanent teaching job, I would use blog to provide my students with links to appropriate sites to use for research projects, to post prompts for writing, and discuss or express their opinions on any topic that was covered in the class.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Technology is a Great Tool!
What more could parents ask for? If the teacher posts the homework on her/his blog, the parents can check what their children have for homework, especially the parents of those children who are careless about their education. In addition, when students happen to be absent from school, they can find out what they have for homework by looking it up on their teacher’s blog. How easy and convenient our lives have become with the presence of technology!
Technology is growing so fast! I remember back in the mid 90’s my first computer was a desktop. It was very simple; it had a floppy disk drive, but no CD drive and I did not have internet either. I could only use my computer to type up my papers for school on the word processor, and play games – which were already installed on windows 3.1. The use of cell phones over a decade ago was limited to making calls only. However, today we can manage our email accounts on our cell phones, we can download music from the internet and we can use it as an mp3; moreover some cell phones can be used as a navigation tool if their features include a GPS . Nevertheless, there are so many functions to the cell phone in our world today. Now what is even more amazing is the flash drive that has replaced the floppy disk and the CD, which we used to save our documents on, it stores more files than the average hard drive on our computers. For example, my computer can save up to three gigabytes; whereas, there are flash drives that can store up to eight gigabytes of data.
It is amazing how we can bring the world to us through the internet and make friends all over the world. It is startling how we can obtain any educational degree from the comfort of our homes. We can be anywhere in the world and still be connected to the university where we are obtaining our degrees.
Technology is growing fast and it is part of our daily lives. Thus, it is every educator’s responsibility to remain updated in the world of technology to provide a better education for the upcoming generations.
Technology is growing so fast! I remember back in the mid 90’s my first computer was a desktop. It was very simple; it had a floppy disk drive, but no CD drive and I did not have internet either. I could only use my computer to type up my papers for school on the word processor, and play games – which were already installed on windows 3.1. The use of cell phones over a decade ago was limited to making calls only. However, today we can manage our email accounts on our cell phones, we can download music from the internet and we can use it as an mp3; moreover some cell phones can be used as a navigation tool if their features include a GPS . Nevertheless, there are so many functions to the cell phone in our world today. Now what is even more amazing is the flash drive that has replaced the floppy disk and the CD, which we used to save our documents on, it stores more files than the average hard drive on our computers. For example, my computer can save up to three gigabytes; whereas, there are flash drives that can store up to eight gigabytes of data.
It is amazing how we can bring the world to us through the internet and make friends all over the world. It is startling how we can obtain any educational degree from the comfort of our homes. We can be anywhere in the world and still be connected to the university where we are obtaining our degrees.
Technology is growing fast and it is part of our daily lives. Thus, it is every educator’s responsibility to remain updated in the world of technology to provide a better education for the upcoming generations.
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