Technology can aid in the classroom in many ways.  Using Microsoft Power Point to make presentations, rather than using an overhead projector can make a lesson come alive.  You can add pictures, sound, and video to your lessons to hold your students’ attention longer.  Open Office offers a free alternative to Power Point.  It doesn’t have as rich of a feature set as Power Point, but in general it performs pretty well in my experience.

Using the internet to do research is a great way to use technology to enhance your students’ thinking.  There are general search engines such as Google and Yahoo, and there are also specialized search engines such as ERIC.

Online Bulletin Board Systems (message boards) are a great way of fostering collaboration.  It also allows students to ask questions if they think of something while at home.  The question may be answered by the teacher, or even another student.  There are many options for message boards.  You can use free software such as phpBB on your own server.  However, this requires some technical ability.  An easier way for teachers to set up a message board is a service designed specifically for that purpose such as ProBoards.

A blog can keep parents informed about the latest happenings in the classroom.  Teachers could post the assignments.  Parents could then keep track of what is occurring in the class, and students could be reminded if they forget what they are supposed to do for homework.  Blogger is a simple way of creating a blog, but a more robust option is Word Press.

A wiki is a website that allows its users to change the contents of the page.  Such a page could be used by a class to do group work.  An easy way to set up a wiki is with PBwiki.  A great example of a wiki is Wikipedia.

In nice weather, teachers could collaborate and use GPS units to help students develop problem solving skills, and learn about how longitude and latitude.   A GPS is a device that uses satellites to calculate where the unit is on earth.  They usually have some sort of map on a screen, and numbers that correspond to the location.