Week+Five

Turning the Classroom Digital __**This Week's Reading**__ : "Are you a Digital Native or an Immigrant" by Marc Prensky

www.flickr.com/photos/ angermann/3629090827/ The article discusses the change in learning style that is present in a modern classroom. Students in our classrooms today have grown up with technology at their fingertips which has altered their brains to function at a faster and differently organized manner than students did in the past. I understand that it is important to alter our way of teaching to better suit the students, however I feel like this article echoes those by Ian Jukes and is very redundant.

__**Cyberbullying**__

http://aidanmaconachyblog.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

The class had a discussion about what had been learned from the Cyberbullying seminar. Here are a few notes:
 * This is an ever present issue in schools today.
 * Teachers who become aware of Cyberbullying are required by law to make a report.
 * Bullying has been happening for years, hopefully we can put an end to it in the near future.

I think the new law that has just come into effect is great. Often times teachers who become aware of bullying situations and will turn a blind eye and not get involved. It is important that teachers put a stop to this. Although the bullying may not be happening on school ground, if it affects the atmosphere of the school it should be reported. Every student has the right to a safe school environment.


 *  Digital Assessments and Evaluation Tools **
 * __**Markbook**__ - Markbook is the recommended mark program for teachers. We learned the basics of how the program works. I think this program could come in handy by helping with weight calculations and determining final grades. My concerns are that the program is not entirely user friendly. As a digital native, I've become accustomed to working with very easy, simple to use programs. This required a lot of instruction to understand. I am also worried about some of the 'problems' that are found in the software, for example not being able to change the weighting of an evaluation once it has been inputted. I look forward to testing this software when I get a job as a teacher, however I will likely continue to process marks in a more traditional manner and do a comparison.

> www.flickr.com/photos/ barrydahl/3161332486/
 * __**Turnit in**__ [[image:3161332486_a95a3b6c4e.jpg width="300" height="240" align="center"]]


 * Turnitin.com is a great looking website that will help with determining whether students are plagerizing their work. I appreciate the fact that so software exists to help with this process, because as a teacher with 25 students, it might not always be easy to notice plagiarism. I also really like the '** green **' factor that this web site has, since it allows students to submit their work online. On other think I noticed when touring the site was the **"WriteCheck"**portion, that allows students to check their own work. This is a great way to help students learn what is and isn't plagiarism!


 * __**Rubistar**__- It's every teacher's FAVORITE thing!!! You guessed it, RUBRICS! Rubistar helps teachers create rubrics, and provides templates that can be used. Althought some people may find this useful, I feel like it is just as easy, if not easier to just create a rubric in a word document.

 __Smartboards__

There are definiately some good uses for the smartboard, but I feel like it will take some practice and trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't! In the meantime, here's a little video about how to use a Smartboard that I found while researching!

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