Search Engines & Web Navigation
Search engines and proper Web navigation allow teachers and students to find better information. There are many search engines available such as: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com, and AOL. While these are most popular in the United States, some may not produce appropriate information for teachers and students to view for classroom use. Search Engine Watch is a site that offers information on all available search engines, most popular searches, and recent search-related news. This site offers various types of sites such as filtered ones for kids and social networking search engines. This can be helpful for teachers in the classroom to teach digital citizenship and netiquette. (Roblyer & Doering. 2016. p. 183).
Website Evaluation
In this video a teacher is explaining to her students how to evaluate sources on the internet as her Technology Committee Project. The teacher has the students actively participate in learning and discovering how to evaluate sources. The project was successful because the students understood what it meant to evaluate something and then were able to apply that to evaluating sources on the internet through a series of steps and guidelines.
Favorite Professional Websites
One website that would be helpful as a teaching professional is Edmodo. Edmodo is a social network website that has been modified and refined to be appropriate for classroom use. With Edmodo, students and teachers can connect with each other by sharing ideas, problems, and helpful tips. It also allows a person to add pictures, links, and videos to a post. According to Robyler (2016. p. 198). Edmodo meets the Website Evaluation Criteria Checklist because it is easy to navigate and and the content is organized.
Another website that would be helpful as a teaching professional is Scholastic. Scholastic is a website that offers educational resources and materials for teachers, students, parents, administrators, and librarians. Due to this website's current, up-to-date content and excellent visual design, it meets the Website Evaluation Criteria Checklist according to Robyler (2016. p. 198).
Online Safety and Security
According to Robyler (2016. p. 174-175), although the online world has many benefits, it also has several issues such as: society-wide debates, problems, and controversies. The main umbrella issue is safety and privacy for students. Under that umbrella term fall categories like online predators, sales pitches aimed at children, privacy issues, and cyber bullying. Online predators are an issue I believe to be most prominent is today's society. Students should not believe everything they read or hear because a person online who gives their name and age could possibly be lying. It is important students know to never share/provide their complete names, addresses, or telephone numbers to anyone over the internet. They should also know to report to their teacher any person who asks them to share/provide these things.
Edmodo will be a useful site to use in the classroom and I use Scholastic often. Scholastic has many useful resources. I love the book wizard on Scholastic. This allows the teacher to enter the students reading level and the book wizard will produce many titles to select for the student.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about online predators being a major issue in today's society. As you pointed out, Robyler (2016) states that most children believe what they hear (p. 175). This is a scary thought. Anyone can say that they are someone they are not and when a student is told that it can sometimes lead to personal information being given away. Sometimes a student might not even realize how much information they are actually given. For instance, they might give an unknown person their name and an activity they do. True it might not seem like a big deal to the student, but as not only teachers but as adults as well, we know that giving out this information can still be dangerous. So the question is how do you drive the point home to students about how important it is to never give personal information to people they do not know?
ReplyDeleteRoblyer, M.D. (2016). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (Seventh ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Educational Inc
I cannot wait to use edmodo within my classroom! According to the book this website falls under a safe and secure site for students to use! I agree that online predators are something scary that students should look out for and that's why I think Edmodo is such a safe site!
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