Technology is everywhere. It has been creeping its way into education for many years now. Teachers are using technology to teach plans, find information, and gain new teaching ideas.
Many schools now have websites of their own. Parents can browse the site and find out the latest school news, school events, and information about school staff.
The latest in using technology in education is in communication with parents and other teachers.
Teachers in various schools are now hooked on to instant messaging. They can quickly login in and talk with one another about ideas and classroom strengths and weaknesses. This saves much time over telephoning or emailing, which can cause teachers to lose even more class time.
In addition to talking to one another, teachers are also now using technology to communicate with parents. Parents and teachers are now more than ever emailing one another instead of using the all time old method of writing notes.
When using email over note writing, both parties can be certain that the message made it to the right place. When sending notes back and forth between school and home, they can be lost missed placed or initially destroyed by the students.
The downfall of using this method is that technology is not always dependable. In some cases, computers crash or the Internet service is down. In these cases, a teacher or parent may receive an email from each other and never be aware of it or receive the message later than anticipated.
While this practice of communicating is becoming more and more common, I think that it is a little uneasy to accept. Parent and teachers have been writing letters to one another for so long that it can be uncomfortable to turn over the pen to the computer. In the beginning some can be a little untrusting of the method. However, it can have great advantages.