Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is a really cool way of getting your class to interact. It is a tool that teachers can use in the classroom to have students respond to polls, or text or twitter in their questions. The teacher can set up a free account for up to 30 people, after 30 there is a fee depending on how many people you have involved in your poll.
Teachers are able to get instant feedback from their students by just having them send in a text message. It keeps everyone involved and is a fun up to date way of collecting information.

Poll Everywhere can be found at: http://www.polleverywhere.com/

Integrating Technology Knowledge

Technology knowledge has become a very important part of our learning. In schools, we used to rely on content knowledge (knowledge about the actual content being taught or learned) and also pedagogical knowledge (knowledge of the practices and processes of the methods of teaching and learning, and how you can incorporate that with other things). The need to be technologically knowledgable has added another circle to our learning circle. They all begin to go hand-in-hand as we look at the big picture of things. We learn the content, learn how we can apply it to other areas of life and our learning, and then we use what we know about technology and we carry it out. Technology knowledge can be as basic as paper and pencil, all the way to logging onto the internet and searching the web for available web tools that can advance our learning. When we combine these three knowledge fields, we are equipping our students with all the necessary tools to be successful in the classroom, and outside the classroom. This way of thinking also prepares them for their more advanced education.

Evaluating Info Found on the Internet

With so much out there on the web, it is hard to decipher sometimes what is true and what is not. As current students, and future educators it is very important to know if what we are looking at is worth our time and if it is valid.
Some ways of checking for the validity of a source is to:
-See if it has a creditable author
-Does the work have a publisher? If it does, it is likely that it has been screened and more likely than not, the info that you are reading is valid
-Be aware of a biased point of view- Just because it is someone's view, does not make it fact, even if it is coming from a creditable author
-Check for knowledge of the literature... Is there a bibliography? Is the author using creditable sources to back his/her knowledge?
-Accuracy... Make sure that the source of the information is valid.
-Is the information Current? If this is going to alter your research, make sure you are finding up to date sources to research from.

Making sure we are educating our students on how to evaluate information that they find on the web is very important so that they have valid, up to date sources when they are looking for research. We are very fortunate to have so many sources available to us through the internet and other technological means, but it is our job to know how to use them and to be able to decipher between the good and the bad.

Literacy...

Literacy used to just pertain to just the ability to read and write. Today, it means so much more than that and is especially important when it comes to technology. Being literate in technology is very important and requires you to keep up with the times. Technology has become a primary way to communicate. It has taken over in the classroom as well as everything has been transferred from paper and pencil or marker and dry erase board to fancy power points or blogs on the web.
It is important as educator that we are aware of how much our students know about this advanced for of literacy and are able to sufficiently communicate with them through this. Literacy is a changing ad advancing at a very rapid pace and although the current generation is very "up on the times" a vast majority of the older generation is behind and I think that they should make an effort to understand the basics of the new generation literacy in order to be up to date because things are only going to become more advanced.