Epilogue of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts

I enjoyed the epilogue: it wasn't anything that I expected. It was a story of a teacher who, in the matter of 15 minutes, created a literature homework assignment and sent an email to the parents notifying them that their child has homework, scanned a compiled list of summaries that links to all the work his students did last night, has scanned a New York Times article that his journalism students will use, bookmarked and saved to his Diigo toolbar, looked as his RSS feeds to read up on the lastest news, and organized his email inbox, all in time to open his classroom door to the sound of happy students. The epilogue pretty much summed up the entire book, with all of the uses that technology offers, from podcasts to RSS feeds to weblogs to bookmarking. As an educator, it is important to understand how to use technology for yourself, the parents, and most importantly, the students. In the epilogue, the teacher set up a connection between the teacher and parents where parents can receive a notification that their child has homework that night. I think it reallly is incredible that the teacher did all of this in such a short time. This makes more time to work with the students, and also more time to focus on the students. I definitely intend to use as much technology in my classroom that I can, for my benefit and most importantly, my students' benefit. As a special education teacher, research is coming out showing that technology is one of the most beneficial tactics for students in a special education setting. With that said, I will do everything I can to learn about technology for the benefit of my students.