Technology for education

The technology we have studied and explored in the past week has many implications for use in the classroom. One online web activity for instance was Flickr, as part of my p.e. course I regularly take digital pictures of activities(interestingly-the camera was the result of the donors choose option discussed in an earlier email from Scott), print them out and post them on a bulletin board for public viewing. I could just as easily upload these photo's and allow my students to view all the photo's online. In regards to the blog site, I could use blogging or twitter to provide my students with schedules, updates to training or other student driven needs that they could access during off hours. This might save a few phone calls to my home etc. The Face-book student-teacher issue is a sensitive matter but the use of a Face-book fan page may have applications in a school environment. At this point, I do not have enough knowledge about this application to form an educated comment on the fan page. I really like the idea of student created podcasts to demonstrate knowledge mastery in health and p.e. All of our students have laptops and getting them to create podcasts to demonstrate higher level thinking would definitely be a quantum leap over the basic fact recall summative testing done quite often in p.e. Lastly, having each student create an RSS feed on health and p.e. sites could open their eyes to new concepts that they could explore on their own. For instance, the N.Y.Times has a physical education section that explores many concepts within our discipline that I find interesting and I am sure a segment of my students would also find this educational. In conclusion, my eyes and energy has been redirected by the potential that exists to use technology and help the students use their intellect for more than videos and games. These do serve a purpose, but only as filler and not as content.