Dr. Christie's Site

Today, I explored Dr. Christie's site. I find it very amazing with the things she accomplished as a person and as an educator. After browsing, I decided to choose the research with Using Technology to Enhance Literacy in Elementary School Children. Dr. Christie decided to conduct a research with the following: A diverse mixture of elementary children, an average age group of 9 years, and grades ranging from second through fifth. Every student were given a computer to take home in order to keep in touch with each other from the study group. They were asked to send emails to each other and just to keep in touch with what they were doing over a period of time. After the research ended, Dr. Christie learned the following about the kids. They explored the internet, researched topics on what they were familiar with to learn more about it and they seemed very happy with with the experience.

As one of the students' wrote in one of his emails to his friend, "I went to NASA and found cool stuff on planets and the space shuttle." "Exploring the internet is fun because I could find anything I want to learn about." Dr. Christie noticed that the children used email extensively to express thanks to each other, to request for help, to share feelings with each other, to request and share information, and to of course converse with friends. Overall in my opinion, this research was very successful with enhancing technology in elementary children. They used the internet as a social and very much as an educational network for learning and exploring new things. I believe that this is one way for children to learn about new things without having to read thick books which soon bore them.