What is an electronic whiteboard?

This is a picture of a student using an electronic whiteboard in an educational setting during a lesson.

An electronic whiteboard is connected to your own  computer with a projector that projects the images from your computer screen to the whiteboard and then allows you to manipulate the images or whatever you have on the screen. They can be used in a variety different settings as well.

I have done a lot with electronic whiteboards during my undergrad or as we referred to them as smartboards. There are so many different uses for them and they are a lot of fun to incorporate into teaching because it gives something else to your lesson and allows the students to be able to participate more in the lesson being taught. We had them throughout my college and at the places I student taught. My professors like to incorporate them into their lessons and we were allowed to incorporate them for different presentations we did as well. Then at my placement the students loved being able to write all over a board and be able to drag items from one section to another section. I feel that they also completely enhance a lesson way more then a typical whiteboard because the graphics the program has and what you can do with it makes it visually appealing to the students and others who are apart of the lesson.

Assistive Technology

After watching the videos this week of different assistive technologies people used it amazed me. I watched multiple different videos and each one took the program and used it in different ways. For example, Elina the 10 year old girl who used the keystrokes program to communicate. She was very hard to understand when she tried to talk but at school and home she used keystrokes to communicate with others and it let her lead a "normal" life. There were two videos though that were AMAZING to me. The one about the woman with cerebral palsy amazed me because she has her own business and does all these different things. She uses her foot to direct the ball for the mouse and also uses her chin to be able to type on a normal keyboard. Also the guy who uses his thumb to instant message, play video games and write a book. Thats AMAZING to me as well. I can't believe that that is what he can do. I feel like he can multi-task on a computer better than I can.

Twitter, more than just a social network?

I've been going through a couple of different articles recently and looking at twitter as a whole and it seems to be expanding then more than just a social network for microblogging. It's evolved into something bigger I feel. I see more and more people going to twitter to sometimes get their news "on the go". Yes I do follow CNN, Fox News, and other media outlets on twitter as well for "breaking news" but I would've never turned to them first for my news. I would turn on the television, read a newspaper or even go online to their websites before going to their twitter to retrieve breaking news information. I don't get why people would turn to twitter as technically a "news outlet"?? Maybe it's the newer generations who are doing so, but still.. I remember in a blog post I had in past talking about how twitter could "save your life" which could technically be the breaking news people use to learn new news because for example a tsunami could hit a small country and someone posts where they are right after it happens and that allows someone to find them but is news...

So I actually have a question to pose with this post...

Do yoiu think twitter more than just a "social network" ?

I think other opinions about this would be interesting..