Linking to learning

Whether you’ve been teaching two years or 20, there are many good reasons to put your teaching presence on the Internet and have your own website. And don’t worry: creating a website has gotten much easier thanks to Google Sites.

Videos are a great way to engage the visual learner, but there are a few pointers to keep in mind when showing video clips to your students. Always preview the entire clip you plan to show from start to finish. You don’t want any surprises. Enhance the learning experience further by having discussion questions before, during and after the clip.

Teaching vocabulary is often seen as a necessary evil. There’s no doubt that vocabulary is a crucial skill, yet it’s often taught through repetitive exercises and rote memorization that leads to boredom for teachers and students alike. The resources below can breathe new life into the dreaded vocabulary lesson.

The Internet has made available primary documents and multimedia material that can enrich and enliven the teaching of history. By studying the thousands of documents, letters, photographs and video and audio recordings of historic and everyday events archived on the Internet, students connect to the past in ways that were not possible 20 years ago.

The tablet computer, especially the iPad, brings new meaning to assistive technology as free or low-cost third-party applications make the tablet an excellent tool for teachers working with special education students. With Apple adding the touch screen to smartphones and the iPad, the computer now is also a tactile and kinesthetic experience.

Fraser Speirs, an influential Mac developer and a technology director at a Scottish school, recently wrote in his blog speirs.org that “the iPad is not the future of education. It’s the present of education.” Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is promoting the use of iPads in schools, says his company believes that the tablet can “change the way teachers teach and the way kids learn.”

The ability to recognize and process printed text is heavily dependent on comprehending spoken language. Fluent readers should understand the meaning of both printed and spoken language. That’s why teachers of our youngest readers should take advantage of Internet sites that offer interactive, read-aloud storybooks and activities that foster literacy.

If glaciers move faster than your computer’s hard drive, then malware, viruses or assorted temporary files may be bogging down your operating system resources. A clogged or infected hard drive will eventually grind to a halt unless you do something about its health on a regular basis.

Researcher Donald Leu created a website on the fictitious “tree octopus” to test students’ information literacy skills. His findings revealed that students did not have the tools to evaluate information they found online. “These results are cause for serious concern,” he says, “because anyone can publish anything on the Internet.”