Main menu:

Subpages for Your Digital Kids:

Part II Back To School Tips for Today and Tomorrow

Just On the Horizon are some exciting new technologies for school

Published: September, 2005

More and more teachers are turning to new technologies to give their classes a deeper, more personal understanding of the subject. Here are just three of them:

Blogs

On the horizon is a whole new way for kids to express themselves in the classroom. Many schools are beginning to incorporate blogging — a kind of high tech equivalent of journal writing. Students will keep diary entries that get published to a web site to be shared and commented on by others. Rather than have your kids create their blogs at home, wait for the school to take the lead. They post blogs in safe places online where only other invited kids, parents and teachers can view them. I’ve seen successful lesson plans built around literature and science experiments that have incorporated student blogs with great success.

Podcasts

A close cousin of the blog is the podcast. Contrary to its name, a podcast has nothing to do with the ipod, it’s simply a term that’s used when someone sends out an digital audio program. Podcasting tools are free on the web and many teachers are having their students experiment with creating their own podcasts to enrich their lessons.

Virtual Learning

Perhaps the biggest shift in education during the lifetime of your children will be towards virtual learning. Suppose, for example, they’re in high school and want to study Japanese or learn to speak Arabic, but there’s not enough demand in the school to warrant hiring a teacher and crating a class. That’s when online leaning with a remote teacher becomes the best possibility.