Embracing the internet

I have been following the Technology and Education Blog; Box of Tricks, and found this July post "Ask what the internet can do for you..." to be extremely interesting and thought provoking.

The author discusses the importance of Communication, and the effort that is being made to make teachers these days "technologically literate" to keep up with the students. What I think is interesting that students do not even think twice about the resources available to them. They are growing up in a world with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. They have an endless amount of information at their fingertips, and yet there are teachers who stick to their old ways, and refuse to learn these new tools.

This article was about embracing the internet, embracing all of the tools available, because not only can they enhance our professional practice as educators, but can also make our lives easier.

RSS feeds and having all of our updates in one place, not only makes new/useful information more accessible, but reduces the amount of time we spend searching for it. Also, it allows us to more easily collaborate with colleagues and other people in the education field, to meet the needs of our students.

Our students are living in an age when the internet is the most common source of information. Why would we not embrace the the abundance of tools out there, and find the ones that work for us. Every new website will not be ideal for every teacher, but surely there are useful tools out there for teachers and students, and if we do not embrace this idea, and "ask what the internet can do for us", we really are losing out.