As an LMS I was aware of most of the searching techniques that we discussed in class and the google game, but I hadn't looked at many other search engines. I'm as bad as the kids, I just resort to google because it's familiar. I did find a number of different search engines that were specific for education, and would be great to use with my students. The one I really liked is www.infotopia.info. I have already suggested it to a few teachers, they all loved it, and I put a link to it on my library home page. I need to spend some more time working with this. We have specialized databases that we encourage students to use, this would just be another good step to take.
I was also familiar with google docs as an on-line word processing tool. I like the idea of collaborating on a document and having it available wherever you are. There is nothing more frustrating than getting home and realizing that I saved an important project to my server folder instead of my computer documents and therefore I can't access it from home. However, people have a habit of using what is convenient and familiar which, in this case, is usually Microsoft Word. Again, I am also guilty. As on-line programs become more sophisticated I think people will use them more and more. The one drawback for using these programs with kids is that our students don't have a school e-mail account provided to them so that they often can't create an account. Our new technology coordinator seems to be in favor of this in the future, so maybe there is hope.
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