Online Schools

Pros to Online Schooling:

Students can attend class even when they are sick

Students can learn at their own pace

Students can work and attend school much easier

Students can complete work at different times in the day, making their schedule much more flexible

Teachers can share media and videos with students much easier since they are using the internet already

Cons to Online Schooling:

Teachers may never get face to face interaction with students

Teachers cannot keep their students on track since the student completes all their work at home without supervision

Teachers may not be able to do authentic activities with students

Students will not be able to get automatic feedback about assignments and ask direct questions with immediate responses

Classes may not appeal to multiple intelligences

Since technology and the internet are widespread and virtually impossible to avoid, online schools seem to be a prospect in the future. While I would rather teach in a traditional school, I would like to teach online to experience it because I could live where I wanted and be able to teach anywhere. It gives a lot of freedom to the teacher to schedule other things around their job.

Emerging Technologies

Emerging Technologies:

Here are three examples of some emerging technologies you can incorporate in the classroom:

1. Smart boards- These white boards allow you to write on them while displaying things from the computer. To highlight important things, you can write, circle, or underline things right on the board. They are touch screen and allow many different types of teacher and student interaction.

You could use smart boards in geography lessons by having students define regions by circling them right on the board.

2. Virtual field trips- These allow students to explore places and things that would otherwise be difficult. They are interactive and students can explore what they want at the pace they want. Students may look at areas they find especially interesting and explore more than in other areas.

These intereactive field trips are especially useful to show students places that are not accessible to them. For example, if the social studies class is studying Egypt and the pyramids, they could go on a virtual field trip and explore pyramids.

3. Teacher Tube- This website allows people to upload their own videos or view videos posted by others. Much like YouTube, this site is convenient as you can share things with everyone via the internet. TeacherTube is much more appropriate for the classroom, however, because it is filtered and provides things specifically for an education setting. You can use this in the classroom to demonstrate ideas that have already been put together by someone else (given you cite them as a source!) or to show activities other classrooms have done. It's an easy way to share ideas in a simple way!