Without using an LMS
In his article the author, Friensen, contends that as educators we should be wary of moving towards integrating technology into our classrooms because many of the services we use to accomplish this task are businesses. He states that they are not in the business of education and the students are not their customers; the companies that they sell advertising to are their real customers. He also contends that all the advertising is distracting our students from learning. I would have to agree with him to some extent however I think that advertising on the side of your web-browser is here to stay and it will become an important life skill to be able to utilize the web or web-based apps, stay on task, all while adds are flashing and dancing on the side. I understand that with younger students this may be too much of a distraction and that is where as a teacher we need to utilize tools like a well developed LMS, learning management system, to funnel content from the web to our students free of advertising. The LMS our district uses, Haiku, will strip away the adds from a YouTube video as well as the “if you liked this video check out these” links at the end of the video and leave the students with just the intended content void of any distractions.
Using an LMS
