pura vida

There are many different goals that I have in regards to advancing my professional development in technology.

The first thing I am going to do and am in the process of doing is to make a list of my favorite websites according to their category. For instance, I am making a category for website related to social studies that I think are good websites to use as references. I am also doing the same for Spanish. Having these website on hand will save me a great deal of time in looking them up.

I would also like to be involved in some organizations that can keep me up to date with technological advancements or teaching techniques using technology. I am still learning about finding these organizations for teachers, but I will definitely consider the websites mentioned in class.

I really like working with technology so I might end up taking some classes that would possibly be information students will learn in school. I think in the near future there will be classes specifically for learning computer programs and I would like to be able to teach one of those classes.

I feel that I am fairly proficient using power point, excel, word processors, and the web which are great tools for education, but I want to be able to use them in a very timely manner. That is to say that I do not want to waste all of my time trying to figure out computer programs. I love the use of tutorials for this purpose and I would like to get a membership to the tutorial website used in class or something equivalent.

Finally, a great deal of my professional development in this area will be directly related to the advancements in technology in the school district where I will work. I will work to be as technologically proficient as the school room allows me to be. I will, however, be involved in trying to get grants for technology in my classroom.

These are some of the ways that I plan on advancing my professional development in the area of educational technology.

Title: Martin Luther King, Jr. A True Historical Examination
Curriculum Area: Social Studies
URL: http://www.martinlutherking.org/

Authority: No Author and No E-mail that I could find.
Affiliation: It is unclear what institution supports this information
Objectivity: The page contains extreme bias.
Audience: The content is not appropriate for my audience.
Currency: Information has not been revised since 1998 or no date can be located.
Content: The information on the page does not relate to my objectives.
Web Site Design: The web site is difficult to read

This is a very poor rating for a web sight. However, when I looked for this site in a google internet search I found it third on the list which is very disturbing. Mainly because it is supposedly an organization website, and yet I could not find any real affiliation the website has with any established organization. Also, there is no e-mail on the site so there is no way of contacting the author. While there is some documentation of sources the author also adds extremely biased opinions that he/she gives absolutely no account for.

The only representation of this website is that it is hosted by Stormfront which is a forum for the White Nationalist Community whose slogan is White Pride World Wide. It is most likely that this organization is a white supremacy group whose sole aim is to tare down advances toward a multicultural and accepting society in the United States and around the world.

The fear is of course that students who access this site might put to much stock in its accuracy which of course is extremely questionable. One reason students might believe the information is valid is because it is a .org site which usually means the information is more trustworthy since it is not a personal web site. Also, the site does use documentation, and students may not realize how narrow the representation of those documents might be and that the site admittedly adds detailed information that has no base. However, if students learn to follow the criteria for getting information from good websites, then they will quickly find out what information is more trustworthy.