Internet-Based Distance Education Lesson Plans

Internet-Based Distance Education Lesson Plans  - Take a look at Education Planet, they have over 65,000 teacher reviewed online lesson plans. Education Planet, a developer of web-based educational products, is committed to enhancing the teaching and learning process by providing teachers, students and schools with easy access to online educational resources and tools.

Internet-Based Distance Education Lesson Plans

 Recent polls indicate that most Americans believe PCs and the Internet are benign or beneficial. They certainly aren’t afraid of technology and seem to believe the conventional wisdom that early exposure to technology is a good thing. For example, Americans spent $424 million dollars last year on CD-ROMs for their children, and a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study showed that on a typical day, 26 percent of 2- to 7-year-olds spent time on the computer, averaging 40 minutes. The public, however, is somewhat conflicted about the impact of technology as they also blame it for accelerating already-frantic lifestyles or creating more problems than it solves. This was evident at the Wired Culture Forum, held in Toronto this past spring, when over 400 high school students raised serious questions about the rate at which technology is taking over their lives—their growing dependence on machines, the isolating nature of the Internet, and how technology threatens their privacy and ability to relate to others. A growing number of technology skeptics argue that the digital revolution has produced a variety of deleterious effects, such as disconnecting people from nature, their communities, and one another. The approach to technology adoption in education and other parts of our culture has produced a disturbing lack of critical thinking about technology’s impact. Critics point to the fact that warning messages of environmental and child-advocacy groups about the negative impact of the automobile and television were largely ignored for decades. Richard Scolve of the Loka Institute—an organization devoted to increasing public involvement in technology decisions—told the Christian Science Monitor that the public’s lack of questioning about technology is similar to the early euphoria over the automobile. “The benefits are personally experienced while the downside is more diffused,” says Scolve. It took decades before people started to balance the advantages of individual mobility and convenience provided by cars, with the collective impact of smog and unsustainable development patterns.