Trends:
Interactive White Boards
The use of Interactive White Boards, also known as SmartBoards have been increasing significantly in classrooms over the last couple years and are becoming a new efficient trend for teachers and students. These have replaced (although some still exist) ordinary white boards and offer a lot more features as well as providing more interaction between students, and between students and teachers.
Interactive White Boards are primarily utilized for whole class lessons and discussions rather than being more "student centered". Even though this is a great technological way to teach lessons to a whole class, this can be detrimental to some. As teachers, we still need to make sure every single one of our students is getting the academic help they need, therefore if IWB doesn't cooperate with certain students academic needs, then an alternative route should be available.
This learning tool tends to make students constructivist rather than objectivist, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. It is positive because students are being more interactive with themselves and with their peers. The teacher can provide activities on the IWB for each lesson they are focused on. On the other hand, it could put objectives to standards on the back burner which may cause them not to be met. We have to make sure when using IWB, that students are making both ends meet.
Issues:
ID Theft
Child ID theft is something everyone must be aware of because it is common for people to steal children's social security numbers and have it go unnoticed for years. If a child's identity is stolen and is overlooked, this could cause major issues for the child as they grow older. Some issues could consist of having difficultly approving for student loans, finding a job, or finding a place to live due to someone else's bad credit. This is why in elementary schools (and all other schools), teachers need to crack down and be aware of their students by being cautious of what information they give out about their students.
The Study: 10% of Children Are Identity Theft Victims says, "The primary drivers for such attacks, the report says, include illegal immigration, organized crime, and friends and family attempting to circumvent bad credit ratings."
http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=28963
^ This website has a great lesson plan attached for students to do with their peers to learn more about identity theft and how to avoid it. At the beginning of each year, teacher should make ID theft one of her main discussions to her students so they are aware it can happen and they need to be mindful at all times.
I never realized that child identity theft was a growing issue, thus I found your post very interesting. This is something that parents do not even realize is happening! It is sad, as we trust individuals with our information, but probably shouldn’t. When looking up cases on identity theft, I found many news articles on how to prevent it. This article in particular found at this web site… http://www.lasvegasnow.com/news/child-identity-theft-gaining-in-popularity brought up some great points. The first thing it stated was that many people do not even realize they had their identity stolen as a child, until they had to buy a car or take out a loan. This article also stated that about 500,000 cases of child identity theft have been uncovered. Since this article was released four days ago, that number is close to accurate. That amazes me on how that number is. Lastly, what I found useful for parents to understand is that sports leagues and extracurricular activities, by the equal protections right, do not have to give out private information. This reminds me of a time I bought a cable box and the supplier needed my social security number. I refused and instead went to a different company. I believe the public and school needs to be more educated on this issue!
ReplyDeleteI used interactive whiteboards in high school and my school during teacher assisting also used them. I found smartboards to be very helpful during whole class lessons. I do see your point about more students centered learning, however, that kind of individual learning doesn't use those kinds of resources. A majority of the learning done in a classroom is whole group. I can tell you from experience that at a high school level all the way down to kindergarten, smartboards can be extremely useful. My kindergarten students loved being able to touch the smartboard and incorporated it into their weekly jobs. It made their learning more exciting and more memorable. We would begin each day using the smartboard and then move into the daily centers and the transitioning was marvelous. It was also effective in high school, especially in math classes where my teachers could very quickly write and erase problems, and also have tons of shapes and add-ons right at their finger tips to help with our learning and understanding.
ReplyDeletePer ID theft, it is amazing how much data are collected on our students for testing...data that is handed over to the testing companies with little oversight.
ReplyDeletePer IWB, as you move on in your careers, think about how you use the term "useful". What does that mean? Better learning outcomes? Better tech skills? Is there data to support these claims?