Blog Assignment 5

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?

Scott McLeod is an associate professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky, the founding director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), and the co-creator of the amazing video series, Did You Know? (Shift Happens). Through his foundation CASTLE, he prepares tech-savvy educators, which is crucial in our time if we are to stay ahead of global competition in the technological field. He has won several awards and has been recognized by companies such as: IBM, the National School Board Association, Microsoft and the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Scott McLeod often blogs at Dangerously Irrelevant, Mind Dump and The Huffington Post.

In Scott McLeod’s post entitled, “Please don’t teach your kids this stuff”, he makes several points addressed to parents, educators and administrators who believe only in the negative aspects of technology. He illustrates through sarcasm that those who deny their students a proper and necessary technological education are lowering their students’ chance at a successful future. This type of sheltering also displays a lack in trust in the student’s ability to make responsible decisions, which is not good for the relationship between the adult and student. I believe that as parents, educators and administrators, it is our responsibility to also be moderators and educate our students on not only the dangers but also the benefits of our modern technology. There are dangers involved with the internet but as with anything else, sheltering our children will not teach them to protect themselves when they are on their own in the world.





The iSchool Initiative

In Travis Allen’s video, “The iSchool Initiative”, he suggests that some of the problems in America’s education system like budget cuts, teacher cut-backs and crowded classrooms could be solved through iSchool. His iSchool initiative proposes that pens, paper, books, copiers, maps, globes, and calculators along with many other current necessities for the classroom be replaced by iSchool. Travis states that many applications and programs for the iPhone are ready to be used in the classroom, such as: Formulae (for formulas and equations), U.S.A. Presidents, World Wiki and Star Walk just to name a few.

Through his iSchool initiative, Travis believes the American education system could save up to $600 per student, parents can keep track of their children’s progress, teachers can track attendance and homework and students can stay organized and informed on what their assignments are. I believe that this is a wonderful and environmental friendly idea and it will be a great contribution to teaching students how to be proficient in using modern technology. My only concern is for the underprivileged students at schools that could not even afford to provide every student with their own textbook. What will these schools do in order to solve their problems of budget cuts, teacher cut-backs and crowded classrooms? The iSchool initiative is a great one but it may not be for everybody.





Lux Aurumque

Wow! This is the immediate reaction I had to Eric Whitacre's "Lux Aurumque" video. Within the first five seconds of the video, before the singing even began, I was amazed at what Mr. Whitacre had accomplished. Through Dr. Strange's class my eyes are being opened to the many ways that technology has simplified our lives but I am absolutely amazed at this video. To think about this choir practicing and working together to make this song as lovely as they did, is a bit boggling. I can say though, that this is another confirmation of the convenience that technology provides. Just think about how difficult it would be to get everyone in this choir together in person to practice and they do not even have to be in the same country!
Kudos to Eric Whitacre.



Kevin Roberts video, “Teaching in the 21st Century”, proposes a change in the role of the educator from the main source of knowledge for their students to the filter of the knowledge that they are able to obtain through modern technology. Mr. Roberts expresses that the current duty of educators is to teach students how to obtain, analyze, apply and evaluate the information that is instantly available to them and also teach them responsibility, reliability and integrity when using that information. Mr. Roberts states that the perceived purpose of these technological tools must be changed from means of pure entertainment(short-lived, often irrelevant way of passively enjoying other's creativity) to engagement(actively learning to problem solve and create with long-lasting and meaningful effects).

I definitely agree with the positions expressed by Mr. Roberts because the convenience of technology allows students to access an abundant amount of information but still need to learn the skills to locate and properly use the information. They need instruction in the use of the information because of the consequences of the misuse of it, such as: plagiarism, slander, pirating and copyright. We need to be technologically literate educators who are able to encourage and nurture creativity and motivation to learn.

Project 9a- Timetoast Timeline

My Loved Ones


This is a timeline about my loved one's birth dates.

C4T #2

In her first post, Mrs. Hadley J shares the reaction of one of her history classes when they found out that they would not be receiving letter grades in her class in her post entitled, "Sort of Like Whitewater Rafting". I like her choice of title "Sort of like Whitewater Rafting" because she is showing that she completely understands how her students feel when she delivers the news about how they will be assessed in her class. While taking her family on a whitewater rafting outing, Mrs. Hadley J experienced an excited but pretty scared moment when she realized that her family's lives as well as her own were in the hands of a college-aged guide. She states that she usually likes to be in control of her surroundings and I can completely relate because I don't like to feel out of control either and during the first few weeks in EDM310, I really felt this way but have gained control and am enjoying what and how I am learning.

In her second post, "Investigating in 2011", Mrs. Hadley J shares a lesson that she taught from a Government unit. Her students were assigned different Republican candidates and had to research their positions on the economy and other issues, using the internet, Facebook, Twitter and encyclopedias. Mrs. Hadley J states that she taught this lesson four and eight years ago and share with us the vast difference in the amount of information available through the internet. She states that it should be the goal of educators to "1. investigate the tools that will help them identify the best sources for information; 2. provide models for how to handle all of the information that they find. They, like we, are drowning in the information that surrounds us". I definitely agree and think that educators should share these goals with one another because while our roles as educators have changed, we are definitely still needed to guide our students in filtering the information that they find.

Blog Assignment 4

Roamin' with the Ancient Romans

In the Eagle’s Nest Radio Podcast #3, "Roamin' with the Ancient Romans" the students in Mrs. Edmison’s class presents a well organized and well delivered audio Podcast about the Ancient Romans. They offer information on four subjects concerning Ancient Rome, which are: Roman architecture, Gladiators, the History of Julius Caesar and the biography of Cleopatra VII. It is obvious that this group of students took their time putting together this Podcast from gathering information about Ancient Rome, then constructing a great script and finally each reporter rehearsing their information to be presented.

Listening to their Podcast taught me the importance of focusing on organizational skills when writing, editing and delivering a Podcast. After listening to their program, I was able to recount every subject that was reported and remember the Podcast very well. I think that it is very important for others to remember main points of a lesson after it is taught but this group of students took the challenge of presenting a memorable lesson, an audio lesson at that, and passed. I will definitely think of this Podcast when I make my own.






The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom

Mr. Joe Dale’s video on “The Benefits of Podcasting in the Classroom” offers many reasons why Podcasting is beneficial for modern day students. Students born after 1980 have never lived in a world without personal computers and are referred to as Millennials. Mr. Dale shares the information that these are the students in classrooms today and that they will spend 10,000 hours on the phone, 20,000 hours watching television and many more with the technology that is developed as they grow up.

Since these students spend so much time using these technologies, why not integrate education into the technology? I love the fact that Podcasting is a project based learning approach because it encourages creativity and utilizes higher order thinking skills. Students are able to listen and/or watch to learn about different subjects in and outside of the classroom, which is very important for students who are out of school for extended periods of time. I think that Podcasts and Vodcasts are a unique and wonderful way of keeping students engaged and excited to learn and share what they know.






1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along Audiobook

I was immediately amazed at how a couple of first grade teachers incorporated Podcasting into their classroom. In the article, “1st Graders Create Their Own Read -Along Audiobook”, a teacher writes about an activity she did with a group of students while substituting in a first grade class. This teacher read a story to the students then recorded the students, in small groups, rereading the story. Once the original teacher returned, the two teachers collaborated in the activity, and even went one step further in writing a script and a booklet for the students to follow along as they listened to themselves through the podcast. This activity proved to keep the students excited and eager to participate.
I am impressed by the initiative taken and the effort of the two teachers who worked together to make this activity work. I never really thought about how or if Podcasting even could be introduced to students in the lower levels of elementary school but this article is inspiring because it shows how technologies can be modified to include students at very young ages.
From this article, I have discovered Garageband which is software that provides music/sound clips, tracks and dead air for users to include in Podcasts/Vodcasts.

My Sentence Video

Blog Assignment 3

It’s Not About the Technology

This post is about the need to focus more on changing the national education system than the need for technology to prepare students for the future. Mrs. Kelly Hines states that teachers in our education system need to take the initiative and need to be passionate about learning about new developments in technology and be aware of what is going on with their students. She also says that, no matter how long of a career a teacher has or how effective their teaching has been in the past, if students are not learning than the teacher is not teaching. I definitely agree with this statement because there are too many teachers who believe that if the student is failing a subject than that student is not trying hard enough. Educators have the responsibility of finding new, different ways of introducing subjects until their students do understand.
The introduction of technology definitely provides a better environment for preparing students for the future but as Mrs. Hines says, if the teacher is not motivated to use the tools that she is given, then the technology is wasted. Mrs. Hines chooses to focus rather on teaching students learning and innovative skill such as: creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem- solving, communication and collaboration because these skills will follow the students throughout their lives and can and should be applied in many different areas of life. Overall, I really enjoyed this post because I agree that not enough focus is placed on developing important life skills in students to prepare them for the future.



Is It Okay to Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?

Karl Fisch shares, through this post, his opinion on why it should not be acceptable for educators along with anyone else in any education system to be technologically illiterate. He states that educators without basic level understanding of technology should be embarrassed by this fact. I loved the question he posed for his viewers, “How long does it take for someone to wake up to the fact that technology is a part of life, not an add-on?” Before the twenty-first century it would have been acceptable to be technologically illiterate but Mr. Fisch believes that by 2020, it will be very unlikely that a person will be able to lead a successful life without technological literacy.
Educators really must believe that we do live in exponential times and even knowing the latest advancements in technology is not enough. We have the responsibility to prepare our students for the future and it is evident right now that technology plays a major part in the ways that we learn and communicate in the present and will be a major factor in the ways that we learn, communicate and teach in the future.



Social Media Count

Gary Hayes displays a shocking count for the time spent globally, doing various activities online. The activities range from viewing YouTube videos to emails sent globally. The numbers are amazing and the post displays the change in the count by seconds so the viewer can watch the numbers rise as long as they wish. This post truly shows that we are living in exponential times and should be the evidence that technologically illiterate teachers need to see the importance of learning and keeping up with technological developments.
I have always been interested in computers and I thought that I was technologically literate until I joined Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class. This post along with a few others that I have read in the past two weeks have shown me that I know very little about technology and that I really have to learn fast to catch up to what is available to me now because it is constantly advancing. This post also helped me realize that computers seem to be the major way that people communicate. This observation kind of scares me though because this seems to be leading us to a less formal and less personal way of connecting to others. I know that I am guilty of texting my family because it is quicker than calling.

A Vision of Students Today

Michael Wesch’s video shows how a group of students at Kansas State University( and I'm sure there are many, many more around world)feel about the current day classroom. There were many interesting statements made in the video that indicate that change is wanted. Students spend more time reading Facebook profiles than textbooks; those textbooks costing hundreds of dollars are hardly ever used. Students are using technology in just about every aspect of their lives but hardly use it for the classroom. Many feel like the way that they are being taught is not preparing them for the the many societal problems they will face after they graduate, therefore, many do not even bother showing up to class or surf the web instead of working on school work during class.

Project 5- My Favorite Things

Blog Assignment 2

Did You Know 3.0
This was a very interesting video about the exponential rate at which technology is growing, how important it is that we continue to learn and grow with it so that America will not fall behind other countries as technological leaders. The video stated that China soon will be the #1 English speaking country and that India has more honor students than America has students, which are even more reason that we need to prepare our students for the rapid and constant developments of technology.

This video shows that so much information is available to us if we decide to access it. Examples of how we can access this information are given in the video by statistics on the usage of the search engine, Google. The number of searches went from 2.7 billion in 2006 to 31 billion in 2008. Also, the time it took different media to reach an audience of 50 million was radio(38 years), tv(13 years), internet(4 years), Ipod(3 years) and Facebook(2 years). These numbers are amazing and are encouraging to me because they show that we have the technology and the opportunities to keep our place as technological leaders only if we take advantage of and continue to advance with the technology that we have.


Mr. Winkle Wakes
Mr. Winkle Wakes is a video about a cute little man who wakes from a one hundred year sleep to find that the world around him has changed and is full of machines (computers) and new technologies, making him feel disconnected and sad.That is, until he goes to a school to find that is just the way he remembered it and even though they had one of the machines, they didn't really use it, which made him feel good again.

While this video is pretty exaggerated it is a very clever and simple way to show the lack of thought that is put into our children's education and future. I fully agree and understood what Mr. Needleman wanted to share with his viewers with this video. Society seems to hold the areas of business and medicine in such high regards and are always looking to keep these areas technologically developed but in the area of education, teachers are underpaid and the students do not have the resources to keep up with the rate at which technology is growing. This is so important because technology is involved in more and more of our lives and in the future we will need people to fill jobs and be technologically literate to keep up.



Harness Your Student's Digital Smarts
In this video, Mrs. Vicki Davis, explains how she enables her students to become independent learners and exposes them to technology through collaborative and individual projects, blogs, podcasts and also connecting them to students all over the world. Mrs. Davis says that she believes that some students have trouble learning because of the limitations of working only with paper and pen. She teaches them to feel comfortable with any technology they may come across.

I really enjoyed this video and some of the things that Mrs. Davis pointed out, such as, to be a teacher, many people think that they should know everything but actually it is okay to learn as you teach and in some cases, your students may actually end up teaching you. Another point that she made that I fully agree with is that she should not have to define everything but that she can give her students a term and they should know how and where to look for the definition. This belief is better for the student because they will feel more empowered because they did the work to find out what the term means and they will be more likely to remember the information that they find.



The Importance of Creativity
This is an entertaining and wonderfully delivered video of Sir Ken Robinson stating his case on why it is so important to nurture creativity in students. Mr. Robinson believes that children are "being educated right out of their creativity". He states that our education system progressively stops nurturing student's bodies and ends up nurturing solely the left side of their brain. He shares with us the information that our education system was created to meet the needs of industrialism but now, with the advancements of technology changing our world and the way we work, we need to change the way that we educate our students.

I really enjoyed and appreciated many of the points that Mr. Robinson brought up in his talk. One story he shared about Gillian Lynne and how she her educators believed that she had a learning disorder because of her inability to concentrate and remain still in class. While meeting with a specialist for Gillian's problems, her mother discovered that Gillian was simply a dancer and learned better through movement. By the standards of our society today, children like Gillian, are put on medication or in special classes and little or no effort is made to understand and develop an alternative teaching style to help these children.


Can U.S. Students Compete?
In Cecelia Gault’s video, “Can U.S. students compete?”, she interviews Ken Robinson and learns the three myths of creativity:

1. Only certain people are creative
2. Creativity is only about certain things
3. There is nothing you can do about not being creative

Not even a month before watching this video, I realized that if I could learn to be creative, anyone could learn to be creative. I always thought that I could never be a good painter because I was not creative but the truth was that I had to learn to draw to improve my art. After improving my drawing and researching art that I found to be inspirational to me, I found that I am now making art that is very creative.

Creativity is not necessarily taught but is nurtured and I believe that Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class is nurturing my creativity. Dr. Strange does give us objectives to complete in each assignment but there are an infinite number of ways to carry each of them out. He teaches us how to use the tools that we will need in order to create each project and we use our imagination to put our own style into our finished product. This is the reason that I say that we are taught the techniques and we use them to create our own work in our own style. I am learning that, as a future educator, I should give my students the tools that they need to learn but also the space to use their imagination.

C4T #1

Mindmapping as a organizational tool was the message of @allonsdanser's blog, "Theories Mindmap", where she discussed how it can be used to organize and prioritize areas of a topic when the topic is either broad or if you need to break down the important areas of a topic. Her topic was Online Communication Framework for her dissertation and in order to fully understand this topic she needed to know information on many other topics so she created a mindmap to narrow down these other topics and gain focus on the direction she will take in understanding her topic.






How personal learning networks can be great support systems and offer a sense of community was the message of @allonsdanser's blog "PLNs and Learning Communities", where she reposted a comment she left in a online threaded discussion about the possibility of developing a sense of community in an online environment. She talks about how she has a very supportive network full of educators, information professionals and instructional designers who provide gentle criticism, great examples of how to learn, encouragement to continue to seek knowledge and the advice to not be afraid of failure. Her post could not have been more on time because I have been asking myself lately what exactly the purpose of a PLN is and she answered that question for me but I did ask her how I go about developing my personal PLN besides just following educators on Twitter or through their blogs.