Math and Computers

I have to say that the mathematical aspects of this chapter were a bit over my head. I use the Internet to buy a book, research a topic, write a paper, not figure out a formula or work a spreadsheet. I do gradebooks on line, this is true but it is via program that i am requirred to use, which runs all the formulas with out me bing involved.
I teach reading, and I have to say I have a difficult time finding how using spreadsheets in my reading lessons can ever be more than using them for the sake of using them, versus being an integral part of the lesson that helps convey the overall purpose of the lesson. I believe that a program, tool, whatever shoudl be used becasue it helps move you along, not because it is shiny and looks good.

I have been in charge of taking my students to computer lab and teaching them the spreadhseet competancies, pretty tragic when you factor in the fact that no one has shown me how to use spreadsheets.

Word Processing

I was very intrigued by the section of the chapter that discussed how the present technology is allowing different intelligences to come to the for ground. A teacher could create lesson and post it on the Internet, that lesson can now have written text, images, and audio. The students could choose which media they wanted to access the information via. I really like this idea. It is something that I had not thought about before.

The chapter also discusses how word processing allows students to produce and edit a piece of writing much more quickly than pen and paper, and this is certainly true. However, getting the students as comfortable Word as they are with pencil, eraser, and paper is in of itself an arduous task, and as of right now my computer time is limited. I think if student are to become truly adapt at word processing and reap the benefits of it a lot more time needs to be allotted to the computer lab, and I see this being a long way off. I think computers need to be it eh room, before this ease will ever be gained.

Linking

I thought that the reading on linking was very interesting. Linking is a computer term, but it is also very much a reading term as well. In my reading class I do not say linking, but connecting. Having students make connections to their life, other readings, and the world is an important part in the reading process. All too often I find that students make what can be referred to as "thin" connections (she has red hair and so do I) versus thick connections (I have felt bad when a friend betrayed me, so I understand how that character feels). I spend a good bit of time in class helping them push past these think connections and look for emotioanlly thick connections.

So the question is, how does computer linking relate to the classroom. I think a neat idea would be to ask students which sites they think should be linked to certain text. For example the students could read a web page and then I would ask which web page appropriately links to the current web page. At a higher age level having students search for appropriate pages to link together would also be a good way of utilizing "linking."

I am trying to think where I learned what computer linking was.. Did I learn it in school, or was it something that I learned simply from the use of the computer? I feel that I am a generation that had to learn how to use the computer on its won, as it was gaining popularity as I grew up, but the need to know how to use computers was not nearly as imperative