Blog #8

Chapter seven was interesting, it covered internet and other distance learning learning tools. There are many helpful tools on the internet such as research paper websites that your students can use. I think there are many postive and negative effects on distance learning tools. They can cause de-socialization, but also have the capabilties to bring in information that the teacher cannot provide. Technology can also create several different oppertunities for students, for instance creating blogs for students to communicate outside of the classroom. They can do this with blogs, bulletin boards, and videoconferencing. Although, there are downfalls to that too, some sites may have inaproprate information, and students could post that for all to see. I believe that I will use these types of internet tools to help me with my classroom such as the search engines, google, dogpile and hotbot. There are many collaboration sites to help teachers use technology to, like MUD, MOO and Advatars. It was a very useful chapter.