Blog Post 4

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?-
At first I was very confused then I started sensing the sarcasm. The style of writing is very unique. There is hardly any punctuation, no capitalization, or any full sentences for that matter. Yet, with all of these mistakes, Dr. McLeod is making a great statement!
When I began reading I was thinking, "Uhh aren't we supposed to be supporting technology in schools?" And, "Gosh, these ideas sound like the unreasonable rules of my high school."
The punchline to Dr. McLeod's sarcasm came when he said
"I don't want them

creating

sharing

thinking

learning."
His cynical comments will make someone rethink their reasoning on the 'blocked-technology rules.' He is right! TECHNOLOGY MATTERS, especially in education.
Dr. McLeod is very credible. He's an Associate Professor of Educational Administration at Iowa State, a co-creator of the Did You Know videos, and the director of the UCEA center for the advanced study of Technology Leadership in Education.

The iSchool Initiative-
An iPod with all of the resources for school is a really neat idea! This just shows how technology is advancing and will become a part of everyone's lives soon enough. Someone who commented on this video said her school is changing to iSchool next year, also. It's awesome to think that my children could be using iSchool instead of huge textbooks and a lot of paper. I'll probably even be teaching students with iSchool!
However, iSchool can have its cons. What about people prone to light-induced migraines? And will the schools be supplying these iSchools? That raises a lot of questions. As in what will be allowed on them and can they be used for personal use? And what about the kids who can't afford iSchool if the schools don't supply them. I'm also curious if there will be different versions of iSchool fit for different disabilities. There should be! And if not, I have an interesting project ahead of me.

Lost Generation-
THAT
WAS
AWESOME!!!
I even posted it to my Facebook wall! That video was just so cool! It caught me by complete surprise. The first half I was thinking "Oh no, this is bad. I don't like the message here." Then I thought "Wait, Dr. Strange would not have us watch a video with this kind of message. And if he did- how mean!" Finally, I saw the punchline! The technique used in this video was very creative. I had never seen anything like it before which may be why I like it so much. One word to describe it- ingenious.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir-
Wow! As I was watching this so many questions popped into my head. Like, how did he get all of their screens to be lined up and organized to look like an actual choir? My answer to that- he must have a mac (haha). What made him decide to even conduct a virtual choir? What an idea! The amount of organization that must have required is mind- boggling. He had 185 clips, plus his, to manipulate onto the main screen. Amazing! Very neat. The interactions between the individual singers and conductor can symbolize the interaction between a student and a teacher in a virtual class. So many possibilities!

Teaching in the 21st Century-
In this video "to teach" does not mean to fill heads with facts and data. It means to teach students the skills they need to acquire and share facts and data themselves. Every fact a teacher knows is now on the internet in some form or fashion. So why do we still have teachers? We still have teachers so students can be taught how to get this information, what it means, and what to do with it! If you were to give a caveman a computer and say, "Learn." What would he do? He wouldn't know what to learn. He wouldn't even know what to do with the computer. That's when technologically literate teachers become valuable. They know what needs to be learned and how to teach it: by providing their students with the skills they need to find the information on their own then share it. I really liked when the video said "students do not need to be entertained, they need to be engaged." Engagement brings entertainment but entertainment does bring engagement.