The use of forums

Forums aren't new for for me. When I was in high school, I often went on forums to discuss about many subjects that interested me. I discovered back then that it was easy to understand how it works. In my Computer Applications class, we were told to create an account on a forum. I must confess that I was surprised because most of my previous teachers did not encourage us to explore forums. However, I think it is truly a great tool that could be applied to a teaching context. Indeed, a students would have the possibility to communicate with his classmates and with his teacher and ask questions to them. Then, other people would come and add more information. If I become a second language teacher, I think I will use forums to communicate with my students outside of class. It is also a good idea to ask us to write on the forum twice a week. At the beginning, I thought it was going to be an ordinary experience but I learned a lot from others. I think students can benefit from using a forum.

Frank

P.S. Read Caroline Quirion's post on the use of forums. I found it very interesting.

Computer Class management

In my opinion, the major problems that can be encountered in a computer class are pornography and video games on the Internet. I remember those years spent in high school computer classes as a student. There were always people who weren't listening during the whole course. Most of them were playing video games that contain often violence. Some were surfing the net looking for pornographic pictures or picture of famous people. My computer class teacher didn't know how to deal with those situations back then. I must admit that I would too be not sure how to deal with that. If one of my students was watching pornographic content during class, I would probably feel insecure because we can't say that it is wrong to be sexually curious since it is part of human nature. However, I would tell him/her that it is not appropriated to a school environment.

I would like to share with you a personal life experience. In a computer class in high school, there was a lot of guys who were playing a very violent game on the net that consists of shooting naked gay guys running all over a map. I remember that there is also a lot of blood in this game. The player is a hunter that needed to protect himself from pervert homosexuals. It is a very discriminative game towards homosexuals and it is based on a false prejudice. What if a homosexual student saw that, he would feel ashamed about himself or maybe he would feel misunderstood? This violent game is only one amongst others.

Frank

P.S. I really enjoyed our class on computer class management because I found it very useful for our future teaching career.