January 17th Assignment

Did You Know? 3.0
The ‘Did You Know? 3.0’ video by Karl Fisch contained quite startling information. Before I watched the video, I did not realize how much technology use has grown in just the past two or three years. The thing that really shocked me was the fact that technology is doubling every two years and the fact that what I am learning now in my education courses will by outdated rapidly. In years to come, technology could be completely ruling our lives. The computers may become the teachers in every classroom instead of an actual human teacher. Knowing the facts in the video, I’m sure virtual teachers are quite possible. I don’t enjoy the idea that there may be a computer that can compute more information than my own brain.

I knew that the countries of India and China seemed vastly overpopulated, but the fact that in a few minutes only 67 babies are born in the United States while at the same time 274 babies were born in China and 395 were born in India is simply astounding. The fact that China will soon be the number one English speaking language in the world is also very odd. What is happening to the Chinese language and what is happening with our English language? I guess the fact that they have many more people than the United States living in their country makes it easy for them to out speak the smaller nation. India’s population is also much smarter than America’s population. It seems like the United States is slowly slipping away. I enjoyed all of the facts I learned in the video and I plan to keep up with the updated versions.


Mr. Winkle Wakes
The video ‘Mr. Winkle Wakes’ by Matthew Needleman showed an interesting view of schools with few versions of technology. The video shows a cute Rip Van Winkle cartoon waking from his long slumber and getting lost in a city full of technology. He first stops at an office and is overwhelmed with all of the machines he heard and saw around the room. He didn’t like the change so he left and went to a hospital. The hospital overwhelmed Mr. Winkle even more with technology he never thought would exist. When Mr. Winkle arrived at the school building, he felt much more comfortable because it was more like he remembered it to be. There was only one of the ‘machines’ in the back of the room.

I think the video was trying to make the point that even though there is so much technology used in every day life, teachers and schools aren’t using that technology to teach kids what they will need to know in the future job market. Most schools do not use a lot of computers or technology to teach their children and that needs to be addressed. I did visit one school through observation hours that did access technology every day. The kids created power points with their teachers to learn history lessons and did reading and English lessons on a computer with their teachers along with many web-accessed games. The children seemed to really enjoy that kind of education and also seemed further ahead than other kids their age. If school boards would adopt those methods of learning for their own schools, maybe all children would progress on a great level and also be comfortable with the tools they will need in the future.


Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity
In the video ‘The Importance of Creativity’, Ken Robinson says that creativity is important in education as literacy and that we as teachers should treat it with the same status. He thinks that we are educating children into a world of being scared of being wrong which causes them to lose their creativity. I definitely agree with that statement. When a person is afraid of being wrong, the person will not want to say anything remotely close to the answer unless it is correct. As a child, you still have that free feeling of saying anything you would like to say, but as you grow older you are taught in the schools that you are only wrong or right.

Sir Robinson says that creative people don’t feel creative in school because they are not valued or they are stigmatized since they were not good at the right thing. I think that schools should offer more creative arts classes to make those children more comfortable. He says in his speech that mostly music and art classes are taught while drama and dance classes are pushed to the side. Dramatic arts and more creative outlets would be a great way for children to learn English and history lessons in different ways! The children would be developing their creativity and also learning the facts the school boards demand that they know.

I thought the story about the dancer was amazing. It is true that most people would tell the child with the adhd symptoms to go on medication and calm down, but the instructor showed her mother that she was in fact a dancer and the little girl grew up to be a world class dancer. That just shows that people need to focus more on creativity than academics. There are so many children with short attention spans and learning disabilities that would benefit greatly from creative activities. Sir Ken Robinson had so many great points and it was very entertaining to listen to his speech.


Harnessing Your Students’ Digital Smarts
The ‘Harnessing Your Students’ Digital Smarts’ video was very interesting. The way Vicki Davis teaches her students is so different from the average classroom you would enter. I love the way that she uses the flat classroom so that the students are able to communicate and learn with other students all over the world. Vicki’s students learn through using all of the forms of technology they possibly can. On the video I spotted computers, cell phones, and even social networking sites such as Twitter. I loved when she said that teachers do not have to know everything about what they are teaching. Students will probably learn more effectively if they have to help the teacher as well. Vicki Davis is a blogger at the Cool Cat Teacher blog. I checked it out after watching the video. It has such great information for teachers!

Vicki Davis’ students are able to show the whole class how to run certain programs so Vicki is able to watch her students blossom every day. She uses the Open Simulator to teach her students new concepts with Avatars and things like terraform. I had never even heard of these things. I wish that I could spend a day in a class like Vicki’s class. Her students will definitely have so many opportunities because of their experience with so much technology. The videos and chats with students from different countries build their knowledge of different cultures and different ways of learning. I hope to create a digital experience for my students in the future and I will be trying to use Digiteen and different sources in my classroom.