Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Remembering 9/11 In The Classroom

No matter where we live, we can all relate and remember where we were and what we were doing on the shocking day forever known as 9/11. As educators and parents of today, we are faced with the task of explaining these events to some children who may not have even been born yet. 


There is a lot of information online. I4C has put together it's own September 11th page of classroom resources. You can find timelines, history, coloring sheets, 9/11 lesson plans, and more


We hope you find them helpful when exploring the tragedies and history of September 11th. If you have links to pages that you can suggest, please email us! We would love to hear from you.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Internet Restrictions At Work

USA Today recently published an article by Greg Toppo titled, "Web restrictions draw ire of some educators," about putting limitations and even bans on some school computer accessibility.  It's understandable, especially these days, how some sites are obviously inappropriate for school and home. But banning teachers from Google images and National Geographic? Are we going too far? What about prohibiting teachers from being on social networking sites like Facebook, or accessing personal email?

I will admit, I did find it somewhat uncomfortable when I heard  my friend tell me how she can see her child's teacher's Facebook page. I'm not sure how I'd feel knowing what my teacher did the night before she came to class. That being said, like Greg Toppo has written in this piece, the Internet is not going away. Children should be taught how to safely use the worldwide Web. They need to be made aware of the pros and cons of having social network accounts. They need to be taught that just because it's on the Internet doesn't necessarily make it true. And they need to be given the tools to know how to fact check. But it's got to be a joint effort between parents and educators alike.

It can be frustrating, feeling like we have enough resource limitations as it is, now we can't visit a web page we want. I'm not sure what the solution is, but again we are reminded of how technology truly does change the way we educate and live.