Timelines

Blog Post 5

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff, Please?

Scott McLeod wrote this piece of satire about teachers who don't want their students to learn about technology. It was fairly stinging towards technologically inept teachers.

I've never thought that people needed to be taught to use the internet. I learned how to do most of the things I can do on computer at home by myself. I think it would be a great thing to teach kids to more easily access the internet and the knowledge stored on it.

It would have been very helpful to have had someone teach me how to use various tools on the internet. I have absolutely no idea what an RSS Feed is or its function. I've never needed to use one. There are many things on the internet I have no interest in that, perhaps, if I had been taught about I would consider more interesting. I think teaching kids to use the internet is a magnificent idea.





The iSchool Initiative

Travis Allen talks about all of the reasons iTouch should be used in schools. It would reduce the amount spent per student by six hundred dollars, it would ease student teacher communication, and it would be more environmentally friendly.

I think this is a fairly interesting idea, but I seriously doubt it will ever happen. It would need a lot more support than internet fame. You would need to convince the Department of Education, school boards, and teachers to use it, something I don't think will ever happen. It is an interesting idea I don't think will ever happen.


Technologically Literate Teacher

This is a cool little musical performance. I'm not quite sure what it has to do with teaching, but it is one interesting use of technology. It was very well edited, and I found it quite fun to listen to.


Teaching in the 21st Century

Kevin Roberts' video seems to be about students using the internet to solve disputed and garner interpersonal relationships. It also seems he thinks the internet should be used to teach responsibility and morals. This is something I disagree with to the point I can't properly put it into words. I think family and friends are the only proper place someone can truly learn about the world.



Reading Rockets

The Reading Rockets website is an enormous source of information for anybody.. Some of the resources I might actually use my self one day. There are resources that could be nearly mandatory to a new teacher. There are ways to find discount books for classrooms that might be underfunded. This site is amazing for a teacher of any subject.

Blog Post 4

Blog Post 4
Langwitches - 1st Graders Create Own Read Along Book

I think it's interesting getting students to record their own audio books. It has a lot of benefits for understanding the material. It also helps keep the student interested. It gives the student a script which is very helpful in comprehension. We shouldn't forget what we wanted to say and digress for too long. We should remember to control the length of the podcast.


Langwitches - Listening-Comprehension-Podcasting

I never thought podcasting could be used like it was in this video. It seems so obvious that it would be helpful in teaching someone a new language. Repetitive use of a word that is used in context is the best way to learn a new word or phrase. When we make our podcast we need to remember these methods because they seem to be very effective.

Langwitches - Podcasting With First Grade

This would have been fun to do when I was in elementary school. This aids a child in learning proper communication skills. After all, it's an interview style script, so the students have to talk with each other to make sure the script sound like it was well thought out. Additionally, when they're acting for the podcast, they have to make it sound more natural by not reading directly off of the script. That would be something we could use to improve our podcast--instead of reading directly off of our script when we record, have it memorized, maybe with some cue cards to help out when we lose our place. If it were only audio we could cut out any blips in the conversation, but being a video podcast, it's best to be completely prepared before you even consider beginning.

My Sentence Video

Blog Post 3

Technology in Special Education

Lacy Cook's video was about how technology has impacted how special education class run. The video showed some areas where simple problems affected students and how to solve them such as cards with the alphabet printed on them; a simple platform for a book to sit on; and how there was one student who needed quite reading time alone in the hallway..

Being able to use computers in class have greatly increased the amount of work that could be done by these students in class. A basic computer, something that is often taken for granted, really helps some of these students to accomplish something that would have been impossible without one. Audio books allowed the same student, who had to have his books read to him in the hall, stay in the classroom with the other students. Audio books are an effective solution for students who are easily distracted by noise. This video has shown me many different ways that technology can be used for I never would have thought of using.


iPad Apps in the Classroom



After thinking about what would help students who have trouble reading in the How the Ipad works with Academics for Autism and searching the app store, I decided "Vocabology" would be a great app to use with special needs students. It's an app that helps students build their vocabulary with words that they wouldn't learn in every day conversation.
It seems pretty simple, and it is that's the beauty of it it. It teaches students new words and allows them to look up words they might not know. This will allow them to build their vocabulary without asking out loud what it means. Some students are so shy about sounding link they aren't smart that they wouldn't ask the meaning of a word.


Gary Hayes Social Media Count

I am not as surprised by these numbers as I would have believed. In the last minute seconds over 750,000 items have been shared on Facebook, not at all surprising considering some of the people I know who spend hours a day on Facebook. I am extremely curious as to how this information is gathered. I am sort of surprised that over five hundred Facebook account has been made in the last minute. The only thing that would make that make sense to me is the fact that a page is made for every new media that is made.

I don't see how this would affect me as a teacher. Should it show me how much time people spend online instead of communicating in person. Perhaps high school will become like college, with almost all classes having at least part of their material online. It seems to me that over time elementary schools will become like what college classes are now.


Michael Wesch: A Vision of Students Today

This perfectly shows how college class are now. In class it is almost impossible for me to resist the urge to visit a social media site or just surf the internet. I want to pass all of my classes, but its hard to care about something you know you won't need to know for your future career. It depresses me how little work I do and still make great grades in my classes., yet stress over it more the classes I actually need.

Classes fill up students' lives with completely unneeded information they will be hard pressed to remember. Teachers also suffer because of this. They become teachers to help students learn, but if they are forced to teach students who obviously don't care about the information all it does is make the teacher want to stop teaching. If students only had to take classes they had some intreast in it would raise GPA's across the board. Well that's my thought anyway.

The Presentation of My Life

CFT post 1

Justin Tarte's post that I reviewed was a discussion on Seth Godin's book Linchpin. It is a book that asks teachers to self-analyze themselves and ask themselves if they are truly doing everything in their power to make their students as successful as they can become with the right help. I commented on how this book did get me to think about what kind of teacher I should be, and how I should act.
His second post was about how a show he liked in 1994 Boy Meets World discussed how maybe tests weren't really the most accurate way to judge how much a student has learned in class. I commented on how this subject can be a minefield. Whenever someone begins discussing whether or not tests are a positive or negative influence on the educational system everyone listening "knows" the right answer and will not be moved or listen to any counter argument. This is a very tricky subject with no simple answer.

Blog Post 2

I thought the fact that the top quarter of India's smartest people outnumber all of the U.S. I thought that honors students were a smaller percentage than 25. The fact that India has more honors students than we have students is a little overwhelming.
Having more people in China speaking English than the rest of the world will be scary no matter how far in the future it will be. If the "learners" learn English they will outnumber everyone that speaks English in America. That would be awesome it would seriously aid trade and make it so much easier to communicate with the rest of the world.

I found the Rip van Winkle video to be a little pompous. I can agree that school hasn't changed as much as it could or should have, but this video makes it seem like the education system is completely stagnant and ineffective.
I understand that humor and satire is used to force changes in society, but it isn't always helpful. Sometimes videos like this anger people more than is spurs them to want change.

Sir Ken Robinson's video was actually fairly amusing and enlightening. He's right about creativity being as important as literacy. If you stifle a students creativity you will destroy that child's potential. I absolutely loved the story about the girl who drew God. It seemed that the main point of his speech was about how varied and unique children are before societal norms force them to give up their creativity and individualism. Of all of the videos on this assignment I enjoyed this one the most.

The "A Vision for 21st Century Learning" video confused me. I couldn't tell if they meant that these games the were waking were to supplement traditional teaching or to replace traditional teachers. I can see how these programs would be good in theory. While many students would indeed enjoy these programs I doubt they would learn anymore from them than from a normal class. If I were to use one chances are I would have fun, but there is almost no way I would retain all of the information.

The "Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts" once more kind of annoyed me. The part where she said that students can't learn with traditional methods alone kind of upset me because this has always been the manner of teaching that has been the most useful for me. I had teachers that used technology more than traditional methods, and I have never been able to retain it nearly as well as "chalk and talk" methods. Of all of the technological usages that she discussed that I am really fond of is her use of Wikis.