Another tool is the KidVid. This tool allows students to make their own videos. It helps them to create a storyboard and script, shoot the video, edit it, and then the students can choose to show their video using the web or a CD. Another fun tool that teachers can use to help their students learn is the Arcademic Skills Builder. This tool is basically an archive of academic video games. They have games like Meteor Multiplication, Alien Addition, Coconut Vowels, and Verb Viper. Now students can even play eachother from different computers.

Arthus said that he thought Twitter would be a great tool for education because teachers could send Tweets and parents could subscribe to it.  Also, the school could send out announcements through Twitter and the students could receive them over their cell phones. 

Arthus and Doug also s social networking.  Arthus said that he preferred Facebook over MySpace, saying that MySpace had a bad interface and wasn’t as private as Facebook.  On the topic of privacy Arthus said he wasn’t really nervous about stalkers, but more so about how his profile might affect his admission to college or getting a job in the future.  He also said that he thought that Facebook should have the profiles set to complete privacy as a default and users should go in  and change their settings if they want more things available to the public.  He thought one of the biggest problems was the fact that others can tag a picture of you and you can’t control it. 

A topic that I found surprising was that at Arthus’s high school the students do not have to sign and acceptable use policy, they just have it posted.  The main thing that students can’t do is use external email accounts, but the students have found ways around that.  Arthus argued that schools shouldn’t block certain tools because in the workforce and real world people will have to use these tools and then won’t fully understand them.  Instead, he thought that schools should teach how students to safely use the tools.

There are two different systems available. The H-ITT CRS lets teachers report and grade any “verbal questions, display questions, or even give paper based tests.” When the student replies their answer is automatically graded and then recorded. Teachers can even set their own preferences to how they want the answer graded, for example if the question was weighted. It is also very easy for teachers to transfer the grades into excel or blackboard.

The second system available is H-ITTShow. This system allows teachers to “create, present, assess, grade and report in PowerPoint.” This system works best with group activities, but can also be used by individual students. It even includes already created slides and clips you can add into your own lesson.

The tablet also allows teachers to dismiss the excuse of students who say they aren’t caught up in class because they were absent. The Tablet easily allows teachers to post all of their notes online, also “everything you present (e.g. PPT slides), say, and draw is captured for web based playback and collaboration” making it easier for students to access information from class.

Not only is it beneficial for teachers to use the Tablet, but it is also beneficial for students. Students can easily take notes by using the pen attached to the computer and then a program can change their handwritten notes into text. Students can also save lecture notes from their teachers in a PDF and then they are able to write over top of those notes as a professor is giving a lecture.

The Tablet is already being used in many classrooms and through the research I have done, I find that it has very many beneficial uses in the classroom. Who knows? Maybe one day the use of pens and paper in the classroom will be a thing of the past.

The three people that I think are prominent in educational technology are Bill Gates, Timothy J. Magner, and Larry Berger.  Bill Gates is well known for his work with Microsoft. Recently he has worked on helping the city of Philadelphia to build the School of the Future.  This school focuses on how technology can improve student performance.  Microsoft has also backed several educational programs that help integrate technologies into the classroom.

Timothy J. Magner is the Director of the Department’s Office of Educational Technology.  He has had 15 years of experience working with educational technology in school and the arts.  His main goal is to develop a national educational technology policy and to enforce it.  He was one of the first technology training specialists fo Fairfax County, VA.  He was the excutive director for k-12 education for Microsoft Corp. He was also an interent specialist and program manager for the Kennedy Center’s k-12 ArtsEdge program for teachers.

Larry Berger is the CEO and co-founder of Wireless Generation.  HE helps manage and improve teaching and learning in grades pre-k-6.  He worked on Educational Technoogy at NASA, where he authored an education technology agenda.