hazal gacka's List: Children, technologies and education in the 21st century

This Victorian Government website for education provides a detailed overview of using various ICTs for teaching and learning. It explains the value of using ICT tools in the classroom for collaboration, communication and locating, evaluating and building knowledge.

This unit of work from the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute outlines the history of the cultural impact of computer technology through the industrial and information ages. It provides a good explanation of the topic for students, as well as giving lesson plan ideas for teachers.

This page outlines the history and importance of technologies and the culture of youth. It also has many links to information regarding this particular topic and education as well as many other related topics and is very useful for the theme of information and communication technologies in education.

This article explains how the UK National Association of Head Teachers believes that students should be allowed to use their mobile phones to harness the educational opportunities presented by their features, including the cameras and the internet. He believes that the technology that students can use via their mobiles will enhance the curriculum learning.

This article by the ‘Innovative Educator’ offers reasons for why teachers should embrace the use of mobile phones to enhance education. They explain how many countries are already implementing the use of mobiles within schools and they give ideas for different ways this technology can be used for learning within the classroom.

This educational website provides a list as well as a slideshow about the various ways educators can use an iPod to enhance teaching and learning. These include creating podcast, audio and visual stories and speeches. It also explains the specific lessons that can be done as well as ideas to use iPods across the curriculum.

This educational foundation article encourages teachers to use social-networking technology and websites for student learning. The author believes social-networking technology can be utilised for “academic networking” and recommends ways in which it can be used within the classroom.

This video is a great resource to show students how other students collaborated to create bilingual, multimedia texts for deaf students in Victoria. The students have used ICT to help deaf students improve both Auslan (Australian sign language) and English.

This short Youtube video shows young people explaining the significant influence of various digital media, such as blogging, myspace and texting, on their lives. Experts also talk about the importance of adults and educators to understand and nurture, rather than disregard this influence, working together with the students and their knowledge and interest in these technologies.

This episode of ‘The Simpsons’ shows the teacher, Mrs. Krabappel’s frustration at the use of mobile phones by the students in her classroom. She is then replaced by a young substitute teacher who uses a mobile to text the students their class work, which is ‘twittering for 20 minutes’. It is a satirical look at the use of technologies in the classroom and is useful to show to students as they would be very familiar with the show and enjoy the connection between the topic and a much loved show.