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Hi,
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Wow Martha, what a inspirational story!! I think it really does show the power the internet can have to spread ideas rapidly and cause significant change.It is definitely a story I will be sharing with my class to help them learn to appreciate what they have but also realise how the internet can be such a powerful tool for good. That clicking of the publish button for the first time gave me flashbacks of Week 1 of Coetail :)!
The power of the internet
I remember when I was younger and I used to hear stories from my parents about no running water, the first house to get electricity, television etc. (rural Ireland was a little slower to catch onto some of these things). Nevermind the stories my grandmother still tells and I used to think what will I be able to tell my children about- we have everything!! As British comedian Peter Kay said when imitating parents of the future talking to their children about the “hard times”
You don’t know you’re born. All your mum and me used to have in the evenings was sky digital. Playstation, yeah. We used to have to manage with a car each, a car each! Your mam, she used to have a dishwasher! You don’t remember – look at her face, you don’t remember them, do you? She used to have take over all the plates, load them in, by hand, on her own! turn it on!
But now I can tell them, we didn’t have the internet when I was growing up! And it is getting harder and harder to remember what life was like before this powerful tool of communication and information came to the fore.
I have already spoken to my class already about how the internet can be used positively to make an impact. We used the Daniel Pink video- “Two questions that can change your life” in a previous lesson to write a sentence about themselves. I then got them to check whether their internet use (mainly Edmodo) reflected these sentences. It was a great way to get children to think about how their personality and character can be perceived by not only what they do in school and at home but also what they do online. We also discussed how employers are beginning to look at people’s digital footprints when making decisions on whether to employ someone or not.
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Effective searching
A real issue in my classroom when it comes to using technology is effective searching. The amount of times children either can’t find the answer or mindlessly copy and paste the first thing they find really affects the benefits they are getting from their research. On reading this week, I am reflecting on where my focus in class has been with regards fixing this issue. I have really focused on cutting out the copy and paste and encouraging children to use their own words when creating work based on internet research. I feel I need to start considering whether I am teaching them the effective ways to research so that they can find the information easier which will give them more them to assimilate, understand and re-word this information. When looking at some of the articles on effective “Googling”, I realised that I am not even using it as effectively as possible so there is no way I can be passing this knowledge onto the children in my classroom. I found this infographic very useful for pointing out some of the simple shortcuts you can use to narrow down search results. Also using websites like kidrex.org can help children get search results that use vocabulary that is more suited to their level. After reading Bob Sprankle’s blog about A Google A Day I will be using this as a starting point to improve their search engine skills.
I think it is such an important skill for children to learn how to use a search engine effectively and change the masses of search results into information which they can actually use. I am hoping that I can focus on these skills over the remainder of the year so that they will be more prepared to conduct a higher level of effective research when they move to secondary school.
Cheers,
Paul