hey...someone put computers in my classroom

Well this weeks topic for discussion dealt with the role of the classroom once all students are connected to the internet.

I think that the first thing that I would do, after I picked myself up off the floor and recovered from the shock of seeing a functional and robust internet infrastructure installed in t he classroom in a public school, would be to follow the newest buzzword in the educational arena and assess the level and needs of my students with regard to their skills and abilities online.

The resources that were available for us this week pointed to the needs of what I would want to teach my class- resources like Media Awareness Network and their Web Aware site point out the obvious to children about the web...that it's not a very nice place and people are often times not what they seem. This is important for children to know, but should also be part of a general and well thought out policy on access setup and controlled by the school district IT group.

I'm more interested in the kids learning from the net...not learning to fear it.

Cyber Citizen, the Digital Divide, and Equitable access sites are also full of information that is important for the students to understand, but not a part of what i would want to make my core curriculum in the class. I want the students to get the idea of cyber crime and understand that greedy record producers could be monitoring your downloading habits with a supoena in hand. That's important to understand, but again not the focus of what I would want learned in the classroom.

I think the the "if these walls could talk" video speaks volumes about where I see the challenges of the new computerized environment coming into play.