A SMART Way of Learning

The SMART boards have become more popular over the last couple years within the classrooms. During elementary school, I did not have the benefit of having SMART boards, but in my last few years of high school, they were becoming more and more common. Each subject department had at least two SMART boards that were circulated among the teachers. They were always so interesting and cool. All of the students loved them! Even as seniors, we were fascinated with the voices it made and the typing skills of the board. It really does the job: holds your attention.

What does society, teachers, and the makers think of this idea? They believe there are a million advantages to the use of SMART boards in the classroom. The teacher is able to interact with all students and really collaboarte together. It is easier to work as a large group with such a technology advanced white board. Also, students with learning disabilities can grately benefit from the SMART board. It allows different teaching styles to be implemented and involve all different types of learning style based children.

Plagiarism

Over the years, plagiarism has become more and more common among students in schools. Why do students plagiarize? Because it is clearly easier than thinking for themselves. Our society has become dependent on the Internet and many times students forget that what they find is not their own. Plagiarism in the past was easier to suspect because of the child's limited resources. However, now, if the teacher suspects plagiarism, because of the size of the Internet, it is still in the plagiarists favor.

Today, plaigarism does not go without any consequences. Websites have developed that teachers can use to check if a child has plaigarized on a paper. One website, often used at my school, is turnitin.com. Most of the time, if a child gets caught plaigarizing they will fail the assignment and sometimes, if so severe, they could fail the entire class. In college, a child can be thrown out of school for plaigarizing a paper.

Copyright laws have become alot more popular and the obstruction of them are carried out now more than ever. People do not want their work passed off as someone elses. It's not fair and it's definitely not right.

E-Mail Scams

E-mail has become a prime way of communication over the years. Even attending the University of Delaware, without an e-mail address you could virtually be lost among the crowd. Therefore, students, teachers, and other e-mailers should be more away of the scams that have become more and more popular. Recently, Nigeria has become the world's place for most of the e-mail scammers. Now these same scammers can break into the victim's e-mail account, impersonate them, and send a pleading e-mail to all the members in their account asking them to forward money to Nigeria. These scammers have entered people's Yahoo, gmail, and hotmail accounts, so beware.

Personally, I think that many people have to be extremely gullible to believe these e-mails. If someone is receiving e-mails from you, don't you think that you to converse alot and are close friends or are aware of eachother's travels. I think that many people believe to quickly and that is how they get into trouble.

Podcast = iPod Broadcast

Podcasting is an audio broadcast that has been turned into an MP3 or another audio file for playback on a computer or digital music player. Recently, podcasting has become more and more popular. Where did the name originate? "Pod" came from the very popular iPod. The iPod has become the dominant digital music player. Even though most of the podcasts are mostly verbal, they can contain some music at times. Podcasts have become available to any subscribers.

Podcasting primarily started because of these broadcasts. However, the term can be used for recording anything and everything back on a digital player. Today, many people broadcast their traveling experiences, museums are making their audio tours available to download, while art students and professors are supplying their "unauthorized" art work on the web.

Technology in the Classroom

Classroom research used to consist of books and the card catalogue found in the school's library. However, the internet has made all of the difference in the past years. Now, most teachers and their students have access to the internet in their classroom. This has changed the way many assignments and research papers have been administered. Research has become the main purpose for children's use of the Internet. Some of the time, the library will not offer the exact topic you are interested in and even so, there is always a limited amount of information. The internet solves this problem. Although there is the overall concern on how accurate the information is, students can receive thousands of searches, providing them with plenty of options to work with.

Teachers themselves can also use the internet to enlighten or draw in the students. Just by using a PowerPoint presentation for a lesson will attract the students. The colored slides, cool fonts, and constant animations can draw the students attention to the screen and allow them to follow the information more clearly, without it being a distraction. Some teachers have gone as far as posting essays, debates, panel discussions, role play, videos, and websites on the internet soley for their class to use.

Blogs in the UK

Blogs have recently hit the UK becoming the newest phenomena. Almost four million people just in the UK alone are contributing to blogs on a daily basis. From teenagers to musicians to political leaders, blogs are being written by all. The entries truly represent the interests of the masses in Britain.

What are the statistics? One out of five blog users update their blog at least once a day. It was also found that women have become more dedicated to their blogs at 23%, where men were only 17%. However, many journalists fear that these same bloggers are trying to steal their jobs. It seems as though they are setting the political agenda. However, this is certainly not the case or the objective all of the bloggers. "They are attracted by the ease with which they can publish online, the instant nature of the medium and the opportunity to make contact with like-minded people all over the world."