Presentation Project #5

Blog Post #3

I think that the points Kelly Hines made were legitimate. She put certain things in perspective for me. Ever since I started in EDM 310, I thought that technology was the most important thing. Ms. Hines made me realize that it is not. There are other aspects of being a teacher that come first. One of these things is making sure that what you are teaching is actually learned by the student. It does not matter what tool you use to teach if the student does not understand the concept.

Hines made another good point that while technology is a good tool, it is useless if the teacher is technologically illiterate. That is why I still believe that most teachers should be technologically literate. Technology is our future. Most people use technology everyday. This is why it is important to have technology incorporated in our schools in some way. Though I do agree with Ms. Hines, technology is not everything.

I felt as though I could relate to most of what Karl Fisch was saying. I also often struggle with the technology illiterate concept. There are so many teachers out there that are great without the use of technology. The only problem is that they might be doing their students an injustice by not incorporating technology. I only say this because technology is the future. Every one of those students will be using technology in their life at some time, if not every day.

I also really enjoyed Fisch's comparison of being technologically illiterate to actually being illiterate. It is a clever comparison. I would also agree that while he may be harsh, he has a point. At one point in time it was acceptable to be illiterate, and now it is not. Now it is acceptable to be technologically illiterate, but in the near future it will not be.

I was extremely impressed by Gary's Social Media Count. I had no idea how fast all of these media accounts were going up. After only watching this for one minute, 60 hours of YouTube video had been uploaded. That is incredible! At just two minutes 700 new Twitter accounts had been made. I had no idea Twitter was growing at such a rapid pace.

One of the counts that really amazed me was the money spent on virtual goods. It was increasing extremely fast. I do not spend very much money on the internet, so this really made me think. Also at just 4 minutes, 4,000,000 items had been shared on Facebook. I had no idea Facebook was this huge. This was an incredible tool.

A Vision of Students Today put perspective into the fact that education must progress with technology. A change must be made. As an aspiring teacher this change must come with my generation. Most teachers, in today's time, do not use technology at all as a teaching method. By doing this, an injustice is being done to those choosing the education field.

For a teacher to teach the student, one must use methods that the students use to teach themselves. This would be things such as web pages, twitter, and email. From my own experience, I feel comfortable using technology, and therefore appreciate classes where it is integrated into the lesson plans. However I do not think that students should be solely dependent on technology. This might encourage one to use technology to do all of their thinking for them.

Blog Post #2

I really enjoyed the "Did You Know" video. I did not know a single one of those facts. Most of them blew my mind. To think that China will soon be the largest English speaking country is amazing. Also it is hard to believe that one in eight couples met via the internet. It is probably more than that now because that video was made three years ago.

My favorite fact was the one about Myspace. I am not sure if it is still accurate because Facebook is now more popular, but it is still hard to believe that the amount of people that used Myspace could make up a large country. It makes me wonder how big of a country the population of Facebook would make in 2011. Also the comment about how in 2013 they will have created a computer that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain. In my opinion they are already there.

The video "Mr. Winkle Wakes" really made me think. I remember in school, I rarely used computers. When you get into the real world, computers are all that you use. I have never thought about this before I watched this video. Because technology is such an important part in adult life, shouldn't we be training for it in grade school? I think so.

The only thing that we need to make this dream possible is money in the school systems. Without money we cannot buy computers or smart boards. I think that computers are a necessity. How often do you use what you learn in grade school, in the real world? In my opinion, not that often. How often do you use computers? We use computers every day.

The video "The Importance of Creativity" was amazing. Ken Robinson is an amazing speaker. He kept my attention the entire time. The story of Gillian Lynne was eye opening. It makes me wonder how much creativity we suppress by putting children on medication. Gillian obviously had ADD and she became one of the greatest talents the world has ever known.

I really enjoyed when he talked about making mistakes. In schools now, making mistakes is the worst thing you can do. Really some of the best things ever invented came from mistakes. We are training children to be afraid to make mistakes. Robinson spoke about how young children are not afraid to make mistakes and be creative. As children grow they lose that sense of brevity.

Cecilia Gault's interview was very well done. Ken Robinson is an amazing speaker. It is amazing how the drop out rate in Finland is only one percent because there is no failing. I think that this is something we need here in the United States. There is so much unwanted pressure about failing that it ultimately makes the children stressed about school. We all no that stress is the last thing you should be focusing on while trying to write a ten paged paper.

To make sure the Cecilia Gaults in our classrooms get what they need, we need to focus more on technology and creativity. We should put the same stress arts and music as we do on math and science. They are all equally important. We need to start doing things like Finland. Our education system really needs to change.

There needs to be a Vicki Davis in every school. Probably more than one. She is preparing kids for the future. The future is not full of pens and paper, it is full of computers and the internet. If I would have had a teacher like Davis when I was in school, I know I would have it easier now. I am positive I would have it much easier in my future.

I really enjoyed this video. It makes me happy to know that there are actually teachers out there like this. We had one computer lab in my school and you could only go twice a month. This is not right. Teachers should prepare you for your career. That is exactly what Vicki Davis is doing.