Hippocampus is the part of the brain most effected by mental auguish and trauma--hmmmm

Perusing the "The World Is Open" website with the links listed by the chapters in which Bonk refers to them could take hours. The sheer volume of choices and possibilities for educational tools as well as entertainment is astounding. That perhaps is where my greatest unease about the internet surfaces--all the choices and all the avenues for deviating off the original goal and intent. If procrastination is a guilty pleasure then the internet is a procrastinator's Shangri-La where one thing leads to many things to all things. Look for a title of a particular book on the internet and end up watching a documentary on a religion that you've never heard of. But as the internet allows you to do and as I am doing here, I digress.
As a starting off point for a lengthy history lesson, (World War II) or to delve into the background of a novel's setting (To Kill a Mockingbird) I believe the http://Hippocampus.org web site can serve as a resource for both teacher and students. I clicked on U.S History on that site and I was impressed by the level of detail and the way the subject matter was organized. There was accompanying text if you wanted to read along with the video and I thought the sources, pictures and audio were all well integrated. You can browse a history lesson or even a mini-history lesson and pick a particular topic within that lesson such as "Native American confrontations" within the Manifest Destiny lesson. It's a mixture of primary and secondary sources and there's even an option for the teacher to custom design her own hippocampus page for the students to really bring resources together in one place for students to use. There are suggestions for assignments and projects and historical footnotes with audio from real historical figures. It really brings history to life for those who just see it as useless and not relevant to today. To punctuate a lecture and a textbook chapter with pictures and audio of the people they are reading about could really make history come alive for some students.
This is one web site that I will want to use in the future.

What is free?

What's there not to like about a philosophy of open source software and software accessibility for all? How realistic is it for most of the children in the world to benefit from this educational opportunity?

Web technology is essentially the new frontier and it's creating new pathways of human cooperation and collaboration. New frontiers are generally tainted by exploitative explorers and greedy prospectors that ruin it for everyone else. Mr. Bonk writes of this new technology age like it's going to equalize the masses to make education accessible for all. Maybe I'm jaded but when children still need clean water and nourishing food and basic medicine and that's still not possible in this remarkable age what good will open source software do for them? And in order to take advantage of any educational benefit children still need the basics of reading and writing. It's an amazing thing to think of that "caring and generative spirit" that it's possible to participate in via the web. It is a new way of teaching and accessing all the information that's being dispersed out there.

What can we gain through collaboration

Not only do great minds think alike. Now with all the interactive media, great minds can now share alike. In relation to widening educational opportunities for the global village of planet earth, there is everything to gain with collaboration being the human glue that holds the technology together. If people are connected in the most fundamental way, through shared understanding and shared perceptions, then the expansion of individual minds via the internet and live stream digital connections might translate to a greater chance for peace on earth or least improve the chances of making a generation of present adversaries future collaborators.
As grandiose as that sounds it is the human connections made through the new means of communication that make everyone more humane and compassionate. If elementary school children can connect and share a lesson and discussion via a voice thread or live video stream with their counterparts on all five continents making the global village a true global classroom then this collaboration will extend through other facets of society. The best place to affect the future is with those still children today. To have a face and a name with children half way around the world can only bode well for the future. Sharing and collaborating among second grade teachers on a global level might yield profund consequences unrelated to academic success for these children. The results might be a new age of humanity and compassion for all people worldwide since after all we all went to school together. And that's a connection, through the assembly of the classroom of all ages, that will probably stand the test of time.

K12 online conference on new literacy strategies for adolescents

The speaker addressed a study whereby two groups of 9th graders who were assessed as non-proficient in literacy skills were taught the same curriculum but one group had the traditional review and practice with worksheets and independent reading and the other had more technology based projects and practice. I thought it was an interesting study and one that only affirmed my belief that we have to use those technologies in the classroom that our children are using to communicate outside the classroom. In the study the technology group did podcasts instead of book reports and paper based projects like the second group. While there were signicant gains in both groups' assessment scores the technology group had a slightly better overall improvement. I think language arts is the perfect subject to have technology enhancements because each student can still really express themselves but in a digital way. There were several phrases that the presenter said that resonated with me such as "changes in literacy practices" and "new communication practices." I would like to be a teacher that really takes advantage of all the ways technology improves access to information and how each students can find their digital and valued voice. I think self-expression is a powerful tool and one that I would like my students to learn how to use in a constructive way.

Why should we integrate technology into lessons?

Technology in the 21st century classroom should be as integrated in the fabric of a classroom as the desks and chairs, which may be the only things that stay consistently recognizable in the not so distant future of education. With e-readers and the myriad applications of cell phones, there may be a day when teachers are no longer correcting papers but correcting e-papers. Technology has become a fixture in today's children's lives and educators need to be aware of how technology can enhance different learning styles and teaching methods. While I do think there is too much paper used in the course of a school day, I can envision a time when textbooks are not handed out but e-readers and students will read the text, and take the test all on the same device.

Technology is now just another basic skill to add to the traditional reading, writing and arithmetic curriculums. There are no more excuses to avoid integrating technology into lessons because technology is a prominent feature of the 21st century lifestyle, and it must be assimilated in the classroom as much as it is at home, in our cars, in how we communicate and in every aspect of our lives.

So why have I been so resistant in embracing new technology? Why do I feel contempt for Twitter? While I do have a Facebook page I rarely post and I see it more as a communication tool to see what my daughters are up to or what's going on with long distance friends. I know that on a scale of 1 to 10, one being someone who does the minimum email and only uses a cell phone in emergencies and 10 being a completely immersed technophile, I am about a 3. I know that there is much more to read and discover on the internet than I have ever sought out because I still go to the library once a week to take out books. I cannot give up my books although I know other book lovers like me who have grown enamoured with their Kindles. I'm sure one day I will be too but for now I won't give up my lifelong weekly visits to the library.