Many of us think of using the computer as being almost synonymous with using the internet, but Morrison & Lowther make it clear that the internet is a tool that teachers can choose to use or not. On the good side, it is an incredible source of information and images. On the bad side, anyone can post just about anything as "factual", and it can be very difficult to get an 11-year-old to distinguish between (for example) an historical society site and a sophisticated-looking website of a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier.
Communication is another area that is greatly enhanced for teachers, at least theoretically, by using the internet. This works best when all of the students' families have internet access at home. For example, I communicate regularly with my sons' teachers by email, but I have never successfully communicated with any of my students' parents via email.
Teacher webpages are another possible avenue of communication with students and families that I think work better in some schools than others. Some teachers in the county where I work post homework assignments or other information on their webpages with a reasonable expectation that their students will check the page, but that would not work at my school.
I do maintain a website connected to a documentary project I have worked on over the past eight years. The project is about historic African American schools in Southeastern North Carolina, and I recently premiered my documentary film "Under the Kudzu" (about two of the schools) at UNC Wilmington. My website, in case anyone is interested is, is http://www.underthekudzu.org/
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