Monday, February 8, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Week Three Post
iPhone Used by One Year Old
I own an iPhone and have been heard, on more than one occasion, saying that it is the best investment I’ve ever made. I’ve recently realized, however, that neither of my parents has ANY clue how to use it. My Dad asked to borrow my phone last weekend, and when I handed it to him, he gave it this bewildered look. He tried to figure it out, but ended up yelling at it instead, which obviously didn’t work (although they’re probably making an app for that). It just shows how huge the gap is between my parents’ generation and my generation. I then realize that when the baby in this video is 20 years old, he might hand me some device, and I will be able to do nothing but scream at it, probably in English, which it will not understand… I imagine Apple will have made Newspeak the official language by then.
Joking aside, I do see this as a shocking indicator of things to come. I am now a seasoned pro at the iPhone, but it took me a bit to figure out how to work it, yet in this video, we see an infant doing just that. At one point in the video, the mother asks the child, “Can you say iPhone?” (See, Apple didn’t even have to pay for that advertising.) It makes me wonder if, 20 years from now, instead of babies’ first words being “momma” or “dada,” we could be leaning over our infants at 5 months old saying, “Can you say dual-core processor?” only to have the child respond, “Oh, Father, please. Dual-core processers are SO last decade.”
Little Kids… Big Potential
I think it is incredible that Ms. Cassidy has her students on the web effectively at such a young age. They seem to be well ahead of the learning curve by the bits of interviews that we saw. They seem quite articulate for six year olds and they seem to have a basic understanding of how to navigate a web page. You can tell that this helps them in several ways. One thing that stood out to me was the boy who was talking about etiquette when commenting on someone else’s post. I think his lesson is one that should be taken to heart by every internet user. Too often people hide behind the anonymity of online posts to say cruel and hateful things that they would NEVER say anywhere else.
This boy suggested that we should keep those mean-spirited comments to ourselves. I think his advice leaves plenty of room for constructive criticism in your comments, but he seems to get the notion that rude posts are not only, well, rude, but they are also a waste of time. In teaching her students blog etiquette, she is teaching them manners as well as other very important skills for social development
Podcasts
The first Podcast I listened to was called “GeekSpeak” which was a link on the iLearn Technology page. The men on this podcast seem very laid back and comedic. They even describe themselves as slackers. These seem like guys I could hang out with on the weekend. They have a very relaxed approach as they talk about tech news involving Bill Gates’ blog and Youtube’s latest updates. This is an attractive approach to me as I am very much a fan of just relaxing and talking about things rather than doing a more formal approach. It really seems like a few nerds are just sitting around and someone just happened to have recorded it. I could see myself making a podcast quite like this one.
Another quite informal podcast was the “Two Tech Chicks” podcast. These two women really seem to be brainstorming while they are driving down the road, making jokes to one another in the cast and even making a sexual joke about an iPhone app. They go into telling us about social applications on the iPhone. These apps don’t appear to have very much educational value at first, but then they talk about apps that help with organization for high school and college students.
The Tekzilla blog was equally laid back, but had a touch more formality as it was a video blog. They stepped it up a notch, too, in the fact that they did interviews with people on the street. I thought this was a neat idea to get the thoughts of others on the technology they were presenting in their podcast. This almost made it seem like a news cast, but at the same time it was a bit less traditional. It reminded me a bit of Entertainment Tonight, only they were talking about tech stuff instead.
I could see myself doing any of these formats as they are very laid back and fit my personality quite well… Perhaps this is why I was drawn to check out the podcasts that looked a bit less formal…
Well, this concludes week 3’s post. As usual, I would like to humbly thank anyone who has read this and taken anything from it.
-Chris
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Week 2 Blog Assignment
Social Media Counter
With the Social Media Counter, I was quite taken aback by just how quickly these things are growing. I knew it was rapid, but one has to wonder how long it will take for the information to become so overwhelming that we can no longer weed out the useful stuff. For example, of the 20+ hours of video updated to YouTube daily, I would imagine that the useful, educational materials are grossly outnumbered by the videos of guys face-planting on their bikes. Of the nearly 1 million new blog posts every day, how many have useful information compared to those that consist of a thirteen year old girl writing about how what’s-his-name broke up with her?
It’s not that I don’t realize the amazing accomplishment we have, I just believe it’s (mostly) being wasted on petty things. While I am interested in learning about using things like YouTube and blogging for educational purposes, I submit the idea that it could easily become counter-productive. See, when I was growing up, I was never allowed to watch television or have any other distractions while I was doing homework. If we are posting assignments for middle schoolers on YouTube, we are inviting them into a hotbed of distracting things. This leads one to identify with Socrates when he spoke of writings. He said the new technology would cause people to “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” He went on to say that if people “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” He even takes it a step further to say that they would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” As I see people become more and more reliant on the internet for information and media, I get very fearful for the future of the human race. This Social Media Counter shows the transition for the written word, which Socrates feared, to a society where the written word isn’t quite good enough anymore. We must have pictures and videos and graphics just to keep a reader’s attention, but I digress.
The Socrates quotes were found in an article written by Nicholas Carr. Mr. Carr’s article can be found here.
A Vision of Students Today
I rather feel that Mr. Carr’s point is made rather clearly in the video “A Vision of Students Today.” In short, students today are lazy. The fact that the girl at 1:59 will read 1281 Facebook Profiles this year doesn’t tell me that teachers need to post info on Facebook, it tells me that she needs to stop spending so much time on Facebook and actually do her homework. A college student should be reading more than eight books a year, anyway.
At 1:50 and 1:53, we see a couple of students who aren’t really being studious at all. We meet a young man who never opens his $100 textbook and a woman whose neighbor never shows up to class. Please tell me how the education system can change to baby the guy who refuses to read his texts, or how we can appease the student who never comes to class. I know! Class in bed! What a great solution! A method of teaching which requires no effort at all by the students. Of course, this appears to be the point being made by the makers of this video. The idea that some people suggest that “technology alone can save us” tells me that we are on a downward spiral to devolution. We are dumbing ourselves down with technology every day.
It's Not About the Technology
I believe that Kelly Hines hit the nail on the head when she says that technology may not be the answer. While NetBooks and so on can be useful tools, the FIRST thing that needs to change is the mindset of the teacher. Unfortunately, in local school systems, technology seems to be replacing teachers. In my Alma Mater, the administration just built on a new wing with state of the art band equipment, a fantastic new A/V room with video and sound editing equipment, a brand new black box theater with shiny new everything. They spent millions of dollars on the buildings and equipment, and now they have cut the choir program. They have had to fire a great drama teacher, only to replace her with a woman who isn’t trained to teach drama, but she was tenure, so they make do. They had to fire the assistant band director, leaving one teacher in charge of 70+ students. They are looking to cut the middle school band program which will inevitably kill a band program which has won awards since before I was born.
All of these changes are taking place because they spent far too much money on all mighty technology, and, as a result, they don’t have enough money to pay teachers. This illustrates Kelly Hines point that, while technology is neat, the teacher is the most necessary asset to a classroom.
Is It Okay to Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?
Now, I believe Mr. Fisch also has the right idea. He takes the time to say that technology isn’t the “Be all end all” of the education world, but he does put great emphasis on the importance of a teacher’s literacy. In fact, I think he is (mostly) right when he says that a teacher who is completely illiterate with computers is the equivalent to teachers who didn’t know how to read 30 years ago. I believe the analogy may be a bit extreme, something he admits, but it is, for the most part, accurate.
My only reasoning for not agreeing entirely is the fact that I feel some classes can still be taught as effectively as ever without the use of flashy technology. I don’t think it is absolutely essential to have a computer in the classroom when studying classic literature. A dictionary allowed millions of students to understand Hawthorne and Shakespeare before computer were around, and we can still do it today if teachers and students are willing to put forth the effort.
I, again, conclude my post by apologizing for my rampant skepticism of technology in education. I do see how it can be an effective tool, but billing it as being absolutely necessary in every class seems a bit much, but, as I stated before, I went to a high school where technologies were pursued overzealously, and teachers were fired due to budget problems.
Until next week, I would like to humbly thank you for reading.
Monday, January 18, 2010
On Creativity and Digital Smarts
Personally, the “Did You Know 3.0” video terrified me. I see the changes happening in the world today and I slowly realize that it will be my responsibility to prepare my students for this world that never stops changing and never stays still. The internet, with its estimated 1 billion machines, is reducing the world to a smaller and smaller place. We have to prepare our students for a more globalized world. Our students will be growing up in a world in which taking a trip overseas consists of opening up a laptop and clicking a link.
I was raised in a household in which World Book Encyclopedias were the final word in facts. If it wasn’t in World Book, it wasn’t true. Today, kids are growing up in the era of Google. Instead of looking up a fact in a two ton book, they are surfing through an endless amount of information in no time flat. This fact worries me. When I was young, if there was no World Book answer to a question, I had to search; Go to the library, ask my instructors, experiment to find an answer. Kids today do none of this. I am afraid that this availability of resources, while a good thing, makes answers come a bit too easily for young people. Nowhere in the Google culture do they learn that they sometimes have to work for answers. This granting of instant gratification fails to teach work ethic and leaves them absolutely helpless if (God forbid) their internet is down. It also could hinder their creativity.
Sir Ken Robinson has a few things to say on the subject of creativity. My fear is that the “information age” is actually hindering the creativity of our students as it robs them of their critical thinking skills. While it can be a blessing in small doses, the age of instant answers takes away from the ideas which Sir Robinson wants to instill. He compares the education system to strip mines. In this type of mine, everything in an area is destroyed for the sake of mining one substance. Sir Robinson seems to suggest that the “substance” being mined is test scores. These scores are a number by which we measure the success of a child, and it does seem as if all creativity is being crushed for the sake of learning math and science.
Another excellent point brought up is that of the fear of being wrong. From our youth, we have been reprimanded, scoffed at, and penalized for making mistakes. We are classically conditioned to live in constant fear of being wrong because of the judgment that is sure to follow. He speaks of how he admires a child’s lack of such inhibitions. As adults, we would rather avoid doing or saying anything than saying something and being wrong. The terrifying question: “what if I’m wrong?” looms over us and paralyzes us to the point that we are afraid to have new and original ideas for fear they might not work out.
In the video with Vicki Davis, I saw a remarkable classroom technique, but I failed to see what useful skills were being learned. I fail to see the need to exist in a virtual world like the OpenSim software her students were using. I will be the first to admit that I am a skeptic about some of the technology seen here. As an English major and lover of literature, I will confess that I feel a bit old-fashioned when I see all of these technologies. I always felt more comfortable with a book in my hands. While I know that many students don’t learn that way, I do feel like I was watching a tutorial on how to play “The Sims.”
I can appreciate the idea of integrating technologies with the material, but I feel as if the technology being used is overshadowing the information being learned. It seems to me like a really flashy way of teaching material that could be taught with less of an entertainment factor. I don’t feel like a high school student needs a Twitter account, or an online avatar. Of course, I could just be jealous that I didn’t have such things back in my day.
Personal opinions aside, Ms. Davis emphasizes something that I feel like I must commend her for. She has the ability to step aside and allow students to learn for themselves as well as teach one another. This, I feel, is an incredibly effective method of teaching which also encourages more interaction between the students in problem solving and collaboration. While the technologies shown here are highly effective ways of teaching these skills, they were taught to students long before computers, and I just fail to see why it is necessary for us to use special software simply because we are teaching for the future. Again, perhaps this is my old-fashioned nature talking, and I hope that continuing in this EDM310 course can change my mind on this if a change of mind is needed.
