Tool 11

Working through the "11 Tools" has opened my eyes to how little I really knew about the internet. While I was certainly functional, there are so many resources out there that I was unfamiliar with. I believe one of our responsibilities as teachers is to open up the students' understanding of available tools and their applications to learning. As their knowledge of internet tools grows, their ability to apply them to learning endeavors will also improve.

I also think that ethics is an area that we need to focus on. There are two facets of ethics we need to focus on, honesty and safety. We have so many students who readily accept plagiarism as a convenient way to complete assignments. Our students need to understand that copying someone else's work does not lead to deeper understanding and that it is unfair to the original source who wrote the article to begin with to use without giving credit.

Using the internet safely really requires common sense. We don't get in cars or give our pictures to strangers face to face. Why should we do that over the net? It is one thing to communicate with someone over the web and quite another to build a meaningful relationship face to face. We need to help our students understand the difference.