You have probably heard some of the alarming stories out there about children being attacked and groomed by pedophiles through online chat sites. And chances are, you’ve found out for yourself how easy it is to accidentally stumble upon inappropriate material online that would be very annoying for children to see or read. One of the great problems of the Internet that discourages many teachers from using it in their classrooms is that the Internet gives access to … everything. However, this is no reason to become reactionary and go back to using nothing but blackboards and books in your classroom. Technology still has a place, even if you use nothing but educational DVDs and educational videos to enhance your lesson.
However, if you want to look a little further than the educational DVDs that your school (or you) have in the resource room, the Internet still contains a wealth of information, and wireless technology also has its uses for communicating with students. and parents even during the holidays. Many schools find that setting up a good security system with a members-only area for certain material (for example, a teacher’s DIY educational videos made by recording a lesson or classroom presentation and posting this online) can solve many problems, in addition to having a good software crash.
The Internet can be a scary place for a newcomer to the world of the World Wide Web. If you are unfamiliar with the Internet and online teaching tools, it is important that you try to improve your skills so that you can provide your students with the opportunities and skills they need. However, if you really can’t cope with it, you should make sure to keep using educational videos in the meantime; Many of the skills you need to know to use educational DVDs in your lesson apply to using online tools like YouTube.
And remember that even videos and DVDs have their pitfalls. While most G-rated videos and DVDs that an elementary school teacher would likely choose as part of a lesson are fine for most students, things with higher ratings (PG and above) can be problematic. Secondary teachers have to exercise even more discretion. It is important to preview all videos, whether they are educational or not. This cannot be emphasized enough for high school literature classes on popular Shakespearean dramas – some productions of Romeo and Juliet can be alarmingly obscene, and Macbeth It has the potential for a lot of gory and horror scenes.
When you start using online tools, you need to ask a lot of questions about any security system blocking inappropriate websites before you and your school pay valuable resource money for it. The older type of blocking software tended to oversimplify things and would block any site that had certain words in it (eg “sex”), which often ended up blocking perfectly benign sites, such as a website with information about a British language. . manor house in Sussex. And some well-meaning biology teachers ended up getting an auto-generated warning if they searched the internet for material on, say, genetic traits linked to sex.
But don’t let the words “technology integration” scare you. The standard methods for using media in your elementary lessons are still the benchmark for an effective lesson, and if you can use educational DVDs, you should be able to easily adapt to using online tools. And videos are still the safest way to use multimedia in your classroom. Technology should be seen as one more tool in your lesson, not tea lesson.
