Emerging Technologies in the Classroom

Flickr- http://www.flickr.com/
This is a great website that allows anyone to post their own personal photos for the world to search and utilize. All one has to do is type in a subject in the search box, and hundreds of photos will then pop up. Flickr will serve as a great resource for me as a teacher. As I'm teaching I can refer to different photos to help me explain people, places, animals, objects, etc. If there is a relevant photo on the site, I can have access to it. The best thing about it is, it's free! Not only is it a quick and helpful resource to me, but it will be helpful to the students as well. It provides students with real life images of the subjects that they are studying. Students could even be allowed to go on the site, and conduct their own searches, thus engaging them in the information gathering process. Flickr is such a great technology!

Global Virtual Classroom- http://www.virtualclassroom.org/about/1C.html
Global Virtual Classroom is a website that allows teachers and students to connect with other classrooms throughout the world. It is free to use, and all teachers need to do is register and select other participating teachers to connect with. Once teachers are in communication with eachother, they decide what kinds of projects the students will work on together. As I prepare lessons this could have a great impact on my teaching. I would need to coordinate times for possible video conferences with other classes, and I would need to make sure that all of the students are somehow engaged in the learning. This could help students learn a lot about other cultures, and how children from other parts of the world communicate. It would be a fun and exciting tool to use in the classroom.

Cenage Learning- http://www-geoimages.berkeley.edu/GeoImages/QTVR/QTVR.html
This URL is specifically geared for teaching geography. It is a great site that provides panoramic images of geographic locations that can be explored through the click of the mouse. Students can even explore behind objects in an image, thus allowing them to explore it almost as if they had been there. As teacher I will need to familiarize myself with the images before I use them, so that I can guide students in their exploration. This site can have a positive impact on student learning. Instead of reading about specific locations or watching a video on it, students can go there themselves, and explore what interests them. It serves as a tool for inquiry based instruction, where students are fully engaged and thinking about what they want to learn about. This technology will allow students to go on trips without ever leaving the classroom.