Blog Post #4

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?

This is a blog called Dangerously Irrelevant by Scott McLeod, who is a professor at Iowa State University. Mr. McLeod is a leader in promoting technology in the classroom, as well as a co-producer of the Did You Know? video posted in my first blog. He is also the director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). All that being said, he knows his stuff when it comes to how to efficiently use technology in schools.
In his post in August 2009, he writes a poem sarcastically emphasizing the lack of technology in classrooms. He points out all the fears that some parents and teachers have about the internet and how this causes them to attempt to shut their students away from it. He lists several ways technology can be used but in a sarcastic tone says "block it all, lock it down, keep it out".
I have to say, I agree with Scott! Teachers and parents tend to use fear as a motivating factor or an excuse to keep technology away from students. We need to be focusing on teaching our kids how to correctly use the internet and then show them all it can do!

The iSchool Initiative

This video is right up my alley! As I was watching this I kept thinking, I wish they had made this after the iPad came out, because I use my iPad DAILY in school! So I went to the website to see what they thought about Apple's newest product and it seems the creators of the iSchool Initiative share my enthusiasm for it. Apple's iPad platform literally takes everything I normally would have carried in a book bag and puts it into a one and a half pound, incredibly slim device. It's amazing!
The creators of this initiative dared to explore the possibility of a school operating solely on this system. Just think of the applications we could use if every student had access to an iPad or iTouch and we could connect to each other. I've saved over $300 (that's over half what the iPad cost) in the last two semesters on textbooks alone! And that's not to mention calculators, notepads, and flashcards! For those of you who think it would too difficult to read a textbook on an iPad, I took a screenshot of one of my books.

It looks just like a normal textbook page doesn't it? Using this application, I can easily flip from one book to the other and zoom in and out to get better views of photos. I can also highlight, bookmark, and post "sticky notes" on the pages. I hope that more students, and especially teachers, start to take ideas like the iSchool Initiative seriously. The possibilities are endless!

The Lost Generation

Wow! What an interesting concept for a YouTube video. In less than two minutes the creators take you from feeling sicken by what the future holds to feeling inspired to create change. I really loved how it was put it together, definitely unexpected. It makes you think about the issues that surround us. I've realized in the last couple of years that I was raised differently from the majority of the people I know, including my husband. My parents made sure that my siblings and I sat down to dinner together every night, worked hard to earn our spending money, and attended church on Sundays. Unfortunately a large part of my generation did not have similar childhoods. This video points out that too often we forget what's important, we expect handouts, or we think money is the cure to all problems. I appreciate how technology was used here to put our minds in prospective.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir

I have never seen anything like this! That is a truly beautiful performance and it is unreal that these are singers who have never even met each other! This was so creative! They used technology to unite this choir and bring their voices together. The emotions in the faces of the performers really makes it special. I can't imagine that this would have been easy but I want to see more work done like this!

Teaching in the 21st Century

I really liked the points that this video brings up. As future educators, we need to consider that our jobs are going to be very different from the teachers we knew as students. With so many ways to use technology in the classroom, we need to be constant lifelong learners. We need to be able to teach students in a modernized way, using the internet to our benefit. I really liked the quote "Students do not need to be ENTERTAINED they need to be ENGAGED". Teachers who oppose the use of technology seem to think that arguments for incorporating it in classrooms is about letting students play with their "toys". This is not the case at all! New devices are constantly being created that allow students to connect and create and whole new ways. It is the responsibility of educators to teach students how use technology in their day to day lives.