With computers now integral to everyday life, the awareness of children to this powerful tool needs to be nurtured from early on, and a move from traditional “book and pen” kind of learning is necessary to provide children with the tools they will need to progress in the Information Age.

While no single course can claim to do everything, both the DigiTitans and ICTopia series are designed to provide a progressive learning experience, representing a practical approach to computer learning through interactive lessons and activities made to create a sense of adventure with the inquisitive minds of children as they acquaint themselves with the essence of information technology.

As the year closes, Google extends is Internet search market share lead over rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft. According to ComScore figures:

Google’s share increased 0.4 percentage points to 63.5 percent from October to November, while Yahoo dropped 0.1 percentage points to 20.4 percent and Microsoft dropped 0.2 percentage points to 8.3 percent.

Further down the pecking order, Ask.com dropped 0.2 percentage points to 4.0 percent and AOL rose 0.1 percent to 3.8 percent, ComScore said.

Source: CNet

READ

The more you read, the more that you encounter words in written form. You don’t have to read the dictionary. Just pick books or magazines that interest you. Just remember that as you read, take note of how words are spelled.

CREATE SPELLING CARDS

You can recycle old index cards and write the words that you find difficulty spelling. You can browse through them while you are sitting in your school bus going to school.

PLAY SPELLING COMPUTER GAMES
There are free spelling games that you can download online. These are usually very fun activities that match pictures or typing.There are games for every level, whether beginner or advanced, so that everyone can still enjoy playing them.

PRACTICE
Practice by keeping a journal or even a blog. Write sentences using the new words that you’ve learned.

Uses his imagination a lot
Pays close attention to images and figures
Takes down lots of notes
Uses highlighter and color coding
Is more organized with his books and notebooks

THE AUDITORY LEARNER

Are often eloquent speakers
Listens in class
Talks while taking down notes
Tends to have poor handwriting
Tends to read information aloud
Easily distracted by noise

THE TACTILE LEARNER

Is attracted to games and experiments
Learns by mititation and practice
Remembers what is done, not what is said
Tends to dislike reading
Does well in Practical Arts/Arts/Science subjects

Here are more tips on how to make sure your children are protected from unwanted entities in the internet:

Keep your computer in the area of your house where there is more traffic – such as your living room. This way, your children will not be tempted to visit illicit and illegal sites as passing eyes can easily glimpse at what they are doing.

Establish internet surfing rules. Write down which sites are okay for visiting and which aren’t. Limit their computer use. For example, they can use the internet about 2 hours on schooldays for research and e-mail checking and maximum of 4 hours during weekends. You can even use more computer time as incentive for household chores if you wish. The deal here is that use of the internet should be a privilege that should be earned.

Make rules about contacts. They should learn that like in the real world, they should only talk to the people they know and they should ignore the strangers who come talking to them.

Talk with your children. Explain what the rules are for. If you just enforce them without them understanding, then they would only be tempted to break them. Help them understand your concerns.

Install child-safe software in your computer. These programs bans your web browser from accessing adult and unsafe websites.

Still even with safety programs, try to manually monitor your children’s internet use. One way is  by asking what homework is needed to be done for that day and such. You may even minimize ineternet use by teaching them good old-fashioned research. You can help them learn how to discern which resources are good and which aren’t by poring over books, magazines, journals, and newspapers. You not only teach them how to be good scholars, but they also will depend less on Wikipedia and other non-scholarly resources available online.

Give your child half an hour to relax if he has just come home from school. Get him a light nutritious snack. Don’t feed him junk food or sweets as the sugar and preservatives will only make him hyper and he won’t be able to concentrate on his homework.

Avoid getting your child distracted. Study time should be study time. Turn off the TV or radio for the duration of the period. Make sure that his study space is clean and free of clutter. Check the lighting and ventilation condition. Make the area comfortable.

If you endeavor to help you child, sit with him and focus solely on him. Avoid multi-tasking while helping him with his homework so that your child knows that study time is an important task and that it demands attention.

Let him take a five minute break after each subject. Just make sure that he understands that a five minute break does not mean 10 minutes of Wii. Explain to him that the earlier he finishes his homework, the more time he gets to do whatever he wants. Don’t forget to check his work so that he’ll also understand that quality too is also important. So that even if he finishes quickly but turns up shoddy work, he’ll have to repeat his homework and thus spending more time than necessary.

Secretary Lapus recently spoke in the recent 3rd National ICTs Basic Education Congress and he revealed the Information and Communications Technology for Education (ICT4E) – a strategic plan that will take five years in development and a budget of P2 billion  (and that amount is slotted for 44,300 primary and secondary schools for only the year 2009).

Ultimately, the ICT4E seeks to “revitalize schools, link students to global resources and enable them to critically seek and analyze information, create new knowledge and products and eventually develop habits of self-learning.” All of these to transform students into “dynamic learners, values-centered and responsible citizens.”

Source: PDI

If you are prone to this, then you will find this post useful. Here are some easy steps on how to remember what you’ve read:

1. Associate words or ideas with personal experiences. It is easy to remember  important details if you can relate them with things that you are more familiar with. For example, it will be easier to remember dates in your history lessons, if they also coincide with friends or family members’ birthdays.  Perhaps, the United States Civil War can be associated to a Justice League episode.

2. Make an outline of your reading material as soon as you are done absorbing it. Write this on an index card. So when you review, all you have to do is look at the outline and then the details will come back to you as you recognize the flow of thought.

3. Highlight the key words. If you are allowed to make marks on your books, you can use a pencil to underline the key details, or even a highlighting pen. You can also write notes on the margin.  Just in case you prefer to keep your reading materials pristine, you can always take down notes using your trusty pen and paper.

Let’s face it. Reading resources nowadays aren’t cheap, and what with the constantly rising cost of living, ways of saving some cash are indeed very welcome. Why don’t you, students, help your parents a bit by being a little more resourceful when it comes to looking for academic resources?

Go to online libraries

There are lots of open source online book sites out there. All you have to be is smart enough to look for them.

The Internet Public Library is vast! It provides not only thousands of books but also research papers and articles. It is also quite credible since it is a project of various institutions. The only downside to this is that you cannot download the books and so you have to read them online. Another online library that is as credible as the IPL is Google Scholar . It features mostly articles and e-books, some of which you can download and read offline.

One other popular site is Wikibooks, which is much like Wikipedia. There are many well-archived books you can look at here. Yet, like when using Wikipedia, you have to be able to discern which resources are legit and which are not as books are edited frequently by the world wide wiki community. My advice is that use this site not for your main resource but for added information.

Students can be taught basic web development through designing their own blogs. They can write at least three paragraphs worth of  entries per week. These entries should still observe correct  writing mechanics such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Subject matter can be given by the teacher or can be chosen by the students; it really is up to the teacher.

The actual work can be done in computer class. The English teacher can obtain all the saved pages of a class in one disk to be corrected.