Blog Post #8

This is How We Dream

This is a two part short video by an English professor teaching at Rutgers University. The professor's name is Richard Miller and he uses these videos to illustrate the movement into technology in the literature world. Mr. Miller begins his presentation by emphasizing the fact that "we are living in the greatest change in human communication in human history". Right away I was forced to think about how the classroom and education field is evolving because of the increasing accessibility to the internet.
Mr. Miller points out in the video how almost every aspect of the literature field has begun to change. Where we use to write with pen and paper and get our resources in a library, we now can do all of the above from the wireless access of a laptop. It really is remarkable how quickly the building blocks for authors: books, libraries, paper, are now becoming ways of the past as we move into the technology age. He points out the new ease of collaboration with the use of the internet. I think that is something that my generation takes for granted, and should do more often. We can learn and share together by using technology and collaborating with one another. One of my favorite quotes that he said was, "We as educators must be in the business of sharing information freely."
In part two of the video series I was caused to think about the future of writing, and what I will be teaching my own students to use to record and express. We are lucky to have so many resources available to us and to be able to, as he calls it, compose. I can really appreciate how he describes that the work of students and authors is not simply going to be a word processing document, but by using the internet to create presentations that are beautiful, and stimulating, to readers using both auditory and visual illustrations. These videos helped me to think about and realize that I want to teach my students how to use the capabilities of multimedia to write and express themselves.

The Chipper Series and EDM310 For Dummies are both hilarious. They both helped me at the beginning of the semester to take some stress out of EDM310, while realizing how important it is to stay on track in this class. I would definitely say the message behind The Chipper Series is you can't put off the inevitable with EDM310. If I want to pass this class, I have to be on time, and I have to be self motivated. EDM310 For Dummies portrays the stress that hits students in the face when you enter this class. But luckily for us, in the end it shows that by following the assignments and using some imagination, this class can be pretty fun. As far as what videos I'd like to create, I'd like to see, or help make more videos that are based towards elementary students. When we watched A Vision of Students Today at the end I saw that there was a version of this video with elementary students portraying the same message, but in terms of a younger generation.
I think it would be interesting to make a video involving elementary students and show how technology can be put to use in younger groups.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn
I definitely agree with the points that are brought out in this video. Too many teachers and school systems today shy away from technology, unwilling to explore the idea of what our education system needs to move forward. It seems like it is such a slow process of getting this idea widely accepted, I mean, this video was made 3 years ago! It made me appreciate the statements in this video even more when the credits ran and the viewers saw that the people contributing are dominant members of education. This video made me think of the quote "Be the change you wish to see in the world", because that's what I want for my teaching career. I want to help the next generations step up their learning styles and collaborate together.

The Secret Powers of Time
This is a video by Professor Philip Zimbardo that illustrates how time affects our culture and society. He uses drawings and examples of how almost everything humans are driven by, learning, success, families, are involved around the way they emphasis or don't emphasis time. I think an important key to take from this video as a future teacher is the fact that are schooling has not caught up to the speed of our culture. Children in America require constant stimulation to be entertained, they need to be active, not passive. Schools need to become more up to date with our fast paced society.
Drive:The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
This video is by Daniel Pink about what motivates us to work and achieve things. I have to say, I was surprised by the points that he makes. He uses several studies to show that people can to some extent be motivated by money, but that is not our driving factor. In fact, the more money that was used to be a motivation, the worse people did. He explains that this is because it was all about the money. People like to be self driven and self motivated. We don't like to be forced to be creative, that's just not how it works. This video should help future teachers gain a little more insight into how students learn. Let them drive themselves and give them some leeway to let their creativity out.