Lisa's Yellow Group Blog Post

My attitude towards what I consider to be appropriate or inappropriate uses of technology in the classroom largely revolves around the experiences I have had while using the Internet. The internet is a vast place, filled with information that I would never have been able to just Google and instantly know during the times I was growing up in, which happen to be the 1980’s and 90’s. I have learned things since I have started surfing the Internet that I could never have imagined before. Also, I have been given more knowledge about things I couldn’t have learned in school, good and bad.
One of the good things that I have learned while being able to surf the internet is that no matter what it is that I want to know, I can find it somewhere on the internet. The only bad thing about that is that how do I know the information I find is accurate? Without knowing how to spot the fakes from the real information, I could be learning something that is completely incorrect and then start sharing it with other people.
Another good thing that I found while surfing the internet is that if I type something in the search engine box in the appropriate manner, I will instantly view a great number of links to find the exact piece of information that I want. The bad thing about that though, is that if I don’t know how to type what information I am looking for in the exact manner that it needs to be, I will end up looking at links that take me to places on the net that not only lead me away from the information I was looking for, but also to places I may not want to go, such as pornographic sights containing the same type of wording I typed into the search box. These types of experiences that I have had while surfing the net, give me some insight about using the Internet in my own classroom.
Being an English major, using the Internet to find information is something I am continually being expected to do. I have to find information for papers involving research on a particular topic that I am writing about, background and historical information about pieces I am given to read and evaluate and many other things. It is my assumption that I will be also expecting my high school students, and even middle school students, to utilize the Internet for particular topics that we are learning about in class. Since using the Internet is so important for my field of study, I believe that it will also be important for me to have the ability to access the Internet in my classroom, so that my students can learn how to use it as well.
When it comes to the question of technology that is appropriate or inappropriate in the classroom, the Internet remains a touchy subject. I personally believe that the Internet is not only appropriate in the classroom, but also completely necessary. It will only become inappropriate if it is not used properly. As a teacher, I will need to teach my students the proper ways to search for information and make sure that they understand how to be safe on the Internet. I will also need to make sure that there is proper security installed into the computer so that curious students are unable to fulfill their temptations of finding inappropriate material to look at.
When it comes to similarities and differences in my techno biography and my classroom post, I guess that I would say that they are completely different from one another for the main reason that I know so much more now about technology now than I did when I wrote my techno biography. I didn’t know much about different types of software that I could use as a teacher in my classroom let alone how to obtain them other then purchasing them myself. I did understand a little bit about teaching students about Internet safety, but I didn’t know much on how to go about making sure that curious students weren’t able to access inappropriate material. If you look at both posts, you can see that my classroom post is pretty much the beginning of a new era for me. An era filled with the prospects of technology in my classroom.
-Lisa Wojcik :)