Teaching and Technology

I believe that there should be a balance between textbooks and the use of other materials to present concepts. I am currently teaching 6th grade Social Studies. I find that many of the materials in the textbook are new to the students as many come from various schools that implement a reform program different to traditional programs. I use the textbook as a guide and find that many of the pictures and visuals in the textbooks are excellent. However, I use technology to present and recap through Powerpoint presentations and videos. We connect to the outside world through the internet. Many of our students are tech savvy and many of them enjoy putting together projects through movie maker or PowerPoint. These are just some of the things I'd like to incorporate. There are lots of sites such as teacher tube or youtube that have videos that help bring Social Studies to life. When we talk about early civilizations, I want to show the students a short clip of the discovery of the iceman as well as some pictures of cave drawings so they can connect the material learned in the text. I don't limit myself to the text but I do use the text as a resource to meet the content standards mandated along with other resources such as the newspaper.
I'm happy that we are moving into a more technological phase with the use of ARRA funding, but we need to make computers more accessible to students. It's hard to expect students to do research online or to blog or podcast when with our demographics, many of our students live without power.