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EDLD 5364 Teaching with technology
This wiki is about strategies and new ways to implement and use technology in our classrooms. Is it teaching with technology really teaching?

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Of all the readings of the week, there were two quotes that made me believe that integrating technology in our classes and changing a little bit the way that we use technology resources to provide our classes, is really a great way to teach several topics to any audience.

Jeff Utecht mentioned that the new generation that we have as students live in a world that has no boundaries, no borders, as is only limited by the speed of their internet connection. How can we compete with that and how can we engaged those students? First of all we have to understand the world where they live, recognize that those students know a lot more of technology than we do, then utilize that knowledge and give them just the thinking and analytical skills to develop different projects and achieve their goals.

Also we have to visualize that the world is not the same that we lived in. Technology has transformed business, life and society. Therefore, we have to be ready to prepare our students to "collaborate and connect" (Friedman, 2005), rather than "command and control". Today, everything is on-line. Everything is digital, mobile, wireless, new technologies arise every single day, and to make it more competitive, everything is faster, better, smaller, smarter, simpler, and easier to do, access, and share. Even a kindergartener is able to share pictures or download them from a digital camera to a computer without adult assistance.

Even though we have to guide our students in the completion of their projects, it is our responsability to teach them how to be responsible and follow the netiquette while collaborating thru the world wide web. We have to make sure that they are aware of the danger around them, specially when they are having their first on-line experiences. They need to respect the work of other people, as well to collaborate to make it better. But also they need to have their eyes open in case they become victims of abuse and know how to solve that situation and who to talk with about it. Ethics are, in my personal pont of view, the first thing that educators must do, before introducing the benefits of the social networking applications.

Although I said in previous lines, that social networking is making things eay and simple, I have to insist in teaching our students, and coworkers to be ethical. To respect time, others work, and to make sure that your team finishes the project on time and that everybody collaborates and helps to accomplish it. Based on the experience of having a solution to the technology scenario for the first week, I can tell you, that when people is not compromised to a project and lack ethical skills, the project is harder to be done and it becomes a pain.