annef's blog

  The new technologies available in schools have, as expected, followed the educational trends by becoming student focused versus teacher focused.  The text describes the new learning methods involving “teamwork, critical thinking, and communication skills”.  Business education is requires this type of learning more than any other, in my opinion.  Some business concepts are hard for students at middle and high school levels to fully comprehend just by reading the texts.  Technology is the outlet that allows students to actually see what they are learning.

Some of the newer technologies discussed in this chapter were: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting, and Flickr.  Most emphasized was New Tech High, which is a Lotus Notes program.  Personally, I have had experience with Lotus Notes during my undergraduate education at the University of Dayton.  My experience with Lotus Notes was nothing impressive, so I was surprised to read about the tools available within it.  I suppose this is another example of how technology is not useful unless you actually know how to use it.  As students at UD we were just instructed to load the software and received no further guidelines.  I was intrigued when reading about the Lemon Grove School District and its LemonLINK program.  I think an important part of implementing any similar software is incorporating the parents, as LemonLINK did.  I am sure it is also helpful that the school is able to have a computer-to-student ratio of 1:2.