Credibility of Internet Sites Block (6)

I went through adventure 1 and I have learned many new ways to be critical of the sites that I visit. I asked my three children who are in grade 6 and 7 to see if they recognized the hoax pages Marnie posted and all three did not know they were false websites. I recognize that we all have a lot of work to do. I feel that living in the North and not really having the opportunity to travel has really limit the vast amount of information that we receive which would make it difficult to recognize truth or false. We live in a world where there is so much information we do not know about because of our limitations. Many of my students have never even travelled to Prince Albert which would hinder their intellectual growth. They still believe everything that is said by people of authority as being true. One of the ways I can begin to teach educators about the importance of being critical is by talking about this information at the staff meetings. I need to continue reminding staff about the imortance of teaching the skills the students need to decifer information on computers. I teach in a grade two class and teachers are still very much in selecting the sites in the elementary grades. We can talk about the sites as not always being true but it is still monitored.
The parents need to be educated about teaching safety and monitoring children on the computer. This is of great concern because many of the parents are not educated about what is true and what is false. There is a lot of talk in my tiny community about people who are developing relationships on the internet and many people are worried about people who pursue these relationships. How do we ensure they are safe? Maybe if we educate the students, they will go home to teach their parents. One of the posts recommend that we teach chioldren to become information managers who will locate, analyze, evaluate and synthesize information and this is certainly true. We do need to create lessons and policies that will teach students about internet use.
As an elementary teacher I would like to use the directories that are created for children because they are easier to monitor when you have lots of children in the computer room and than students will need to learn about becomiung information managers when they are in grade 4 or 5.

Elders in School

Pinehouse square dancers

glogging

I love it and I hate it. I just tried glogging for the first time and then I posted on my blog. It was actually not a bad experience. It was easy to share considering this is my family. I have also posted some material for the first time on u tube then I phoned everybody that I knew to look at Pinehouse cultural events under u tube to see if I was successful. There are so many negative things the kids in my community have posted and I wonder how anyone can have pride when all they see is material that is destructive to their culture. I am trying to switch this around by placing our cultural strenghts on u tube. I tried to upload this same presentation onto my blog but I have not been successful.
I'm not doing too bad considering I only knew the minimum when I started.

Glogster

technology

Okay already, I'm conformed and I think I'm having an affair with my computer. I have been trying some of the tools on the computer and I can't believe how ADDICTED I have become. I am at my work place every night going through the process of figuring things out and totally enjoying the process.

Classroom Design

I agree that classroom design is an important component to classroom learning but it needs to be monitored consistently because some students who sit together are constantly interrupting each other. There are also students who do not get along and they need to be physically seperated. If students can not deal with the issues that will destroy their education then they need to seperated.
We have a classroom in out school that looks like a house because it is a functionally integrated program where they learn lifeskills and the students who are in traditional classrooms envy the students who are in a comfortable environment. The picture that is in Clarence's bloglooks similiar to the functionally integrated class.
I do not have rows of desks, I have two large groups, one small group and two students who sit independantly. We need to base our structure depending on the students needs.