Ed Tech Week 2

I'm a bit late in blogging about week 2, which is really week 2.5 ( I was going to write 1/2, but realized the more techie way of doing things is to put in the .5! ) By the way, I was automatically upgraded to Firefox version 2.18 and now I'm having all kinds of issues using WebCT -- so be careful! I also can't seem to find any assignments in the drop box for week 4 and the due dates for week 3 and week 5 are the same -- Nov. 23. I thought all of that stuff was supposed to be sorted out?! Some of the other students have mentioned that it has, so now I'm wondering if it was just sorted out for the people on the other discussion board?

I enjoyed exploring Wikipedia and was amazed at all of the junk that was on there -- good and bad. It was interesting to look at the history of the pages and the discussion boards -- and how nit-picky the contributors were! And I have been working on my web site but it is still a work in progress. I didn't have much trouble getting it set up, but I am having trouble coming up with meaningful content! I have been a bit frustrated by the zones that Windows Live uses -- I can't seem to get them to change shape the way I want them to but I think that might be a Firefox issue as well. I'm going to try finishing it using Explorer and see what happens.

I have really been thinking a lot about how all of this educational technology stuff applies to my kids. I must admit that as a parent, I haven’t exactly encouraged my kids to sit in front of the computer or video game console for hours on end and I limit their TV viewing. As a result, my 10-year-old is totally afraid of the computer. Once in a blue moon he will ask to look up a web site but he does NOT want to play games or learn to type his school reports. What would a teacher do with him in a totally plugged-in classroom? I’m worried about him and his ability to cope with all of this technology. My five-year-old, on the other hand, is much more curious about the computer and was allowed to play games on one in his pre-school. He was given a Webkinz toy for his birthday (in August) and finally today he asked if we could go online and play with it. I agreed and we delved into the Webkinz world. After signing up we finally got to the games and played an educational trivia game for about 10 minutes before he announced that he was done, finito. He wanted to go back and play with his Lego. That seemed like a good balance to me. But I was amazed at the Webkinz world and all of the bells and whistles there were -- for me, it was hard to take it all in!