Technology & Student Safety

I knew that the internet could potentially be a dangerous place for children, but after our class discussion last Thursday I was surprised to find out that we, as teachers, can be held responsible for internet and technological misuses. Our students will have so much exposure to technology that by the time that they reach high school they should be well aware of technological rights and wrongs. As a future high school teacher I believe that the best way to protect yourself as a teacher is to talk to your students. Remind them of things that they should not be doing at school (and at home for that matter) on their computers. I think that students should be told that if something were to go wrong, that the teacher would be personally responsible for the incident. This way the student should feel more pressure and more of a responsibility to use technology responsibly.

Assessments

Assessments
Assessments are crucial to both students and teachers. Students view assessments as a means of showing their knowledge in the content area for points or a grade. To educators, student assessments are reflections of their teaching. It is a quick way to tell whether or not students are grasping the material and to see if your teaching methods apply to a specific class or a specific student. I think that formative assessments can help educators track their own teaching effectiveness, and in turn will track the abilities of a student. Summative assessments seem important only for grading purposes, but the truth is that if a student is not doing well on formative assessments, something needs to be changed because they will not do well on the summative assessment.