Technology article reflections

Of the two articles we were requested to read for technology class, "Rethinking Online Reading Assessment" was the longer but also very informative. I did not realize some online readers are not good offline readers and visa-versa. Nor did I ever stop to realize how this creates the need for new assessments. Since I teach middle school, the part concerning adolescents was most interesting. I did not realize students used a ".com strategy" nor that many students only look at the first link given. I also did not realize these students give up easily if the information is hard to find or even try to retype lenghtly URLs which leads to mistakes. All of this was very pertinent in my academic world and something I very much needed to be aware of while teaching adolescents. It provided a new perspective both on my explanations to them and my expectations of them.
The second article, "Video Games and Civic Engagement," was also extemely interesting and brought to my attention the value of some video games I was previously unaware of. The civic awareness some of the games envoked for these students is a positive response to what I felt was an otherwise waste of time. Now, if we can just get more students playing the more productive games, all would be well with the video-gaming world!