Blog Post 2

Mr. Dancealot

The YouTube video Mr. Dancealot portrays a significant central message of not being able to learn without a hands on experience. I came to the conclusion with the fact that all the students' professor did was lecture. He talked and talked all about the facts of these dances but never put those facts to use. He never let the students get up to try the step coordinates he showed on his powerpoints. Instead of going over the steps the students were sleeping and twiddling their fingers in their seats. I do not agree with his conclusion that they should be able to dance by the time the final came around due to the fact all the experience they had was taking notes. You cannot dance with a notebook if it is your first time. You must practice those dances because practice makes perfect.

Teaching in the 21st Century

What does it mean to teach in the 21st century? Kevin Roberts thinks it revolves around being engaged in the classroom. Engagement is key because it leads to problem solving, which is learning. Engaging in learning is passive and leads to solving problems, which once again leads to learning. It also requires more relevance, which is critical to learning. He says it is all about "meaningful and powerful engagement?. That is how you learn with technology.

Teaching in the 21st century gives learning a whole new spin. You can share everything via Facebook, blogs, and podcasts. These technological advances allow the student to have self reflection on the work that they have completed which is one of the most positive aspects of technology. Self reflection gives the students a chance to see where they have room for improvement. Although Roberts has an overall good view of technology in the 21st century in education; however, there is a negative side to all of these advances. With technology comes copyright issues, students using slander in writing, and students plagiarizing. These things can be avoided if the student's are taught what not to do when using technology and it is reiterated. Roberts thinks that technology will give education a huge advance. It creates six ways for kids to learn better. Those six ways are: create, evaluate, analyze, apply, understand, and remember. Instead of teachers pushing out facts for memorization for a test and then the students forgetting this information, it forces students to engage in what is going on in the classroom and actually obtain the information. I agree with the way Kevin Roberts sees education changing. Just as technology is making an advance in schools, it is also making an advance in the world. So, we adapt and we use the technology to our advantage. I agree that a more technological way of education is beneficial. More kids these days use tablets to play learning games. Those kids are learning at a very young age with the technology the world offers today and they seem to get the hang of it! If Roberts is correct, it will greatly impact me as a teacher. Things will be much different than the way I learned when I was in elementary school. Everything will be technology based in the classrooms. I believe there will always be hands on technological learning devices in the classrooms for the students' use, such as computers, ipads, and game consoles. As for my use, chalkboards have gone to dry erase boards and then on to smart boards, so I should expect something of more high quality technology to come with the future. With new technology comes new things that you must adapt to and learn how to use. As a teacher, you can't teach with a smart board unless you know exactly how to use it, otherwise your students will probably be just as confused. In the long run, using technology in schools can help you students more than it would hurt them.

Networked Student

The Networked Student describes student's without teachers learning through networking with other students using the technology the world offers today. The video mainly states that students can accomplish their own work without guidance from a teacher. Students use networking to access lectures from experts at schools such as Berkeley. They also use Google Scholar which is a web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats. Using Google Scholar allows you so much access to educational books, articles, and documents. By looking up everything online, that is how they will learn. But why does the networked student even need a teacher? What if you did not have this technology on your own? How could you learn independently without the key source to all of this information? Students would need a teacher to help begin the process of creating this network. Teachers can also help provide learning opportunities that someone may not be able to do on their own. Teachers are there for the main purpose of guidance. How can you know the difference between right or wrong without a little help? You can also get guidance from online and networking; however, some sources give out false information. If you had a teacher, they could help you differentiate between good and bad information. They can teach you the respectful way to ask help from those experts that you have found using networking. Although networking is extremely useful, students will always need someone to turn to for educational and correct advice. That is where the teacher comes in; to help you maintain that network and instruct you to the future. My reaction is that is all makes sense for a networked student to not have a teacher, but what about the obstacles? Who will help you overcome them if you cannot do it on your own? In my opinion, thats where the teacher comes into place. For example, online courses are for the networked student, but it is never a bad thing to have a professor to call upon for help if you ever do need it.

Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts

In the video, Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts, the thesis is empowering students by making them learn. By giving the students new software and new terms that they have never seen before, it forces them to figure some things out for themselves. When the student's do figure it out independently it gives them a sense of empowerment. The author of Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts,Vicki Davis, even makes her students teach the class. This allows students to really learn the material correctly before presenting it to the whole class. There is nothing more satisfying than feeling accomplished with the work given to you. I think Davis has the right idea about harnessing students' digital smarts. She is teaching them how to learn and follow new trends with other people from all over the world. This is all very beneficial to the student. I really enjoyed her perspective on her methods and I couldn't agree more with her opinion. I hope to be able to teach my student's like that one day.

Flipping The Classroom

Flipping The Classroom is a informative video on the new innovative approach to classroom instruction. When I watch all of these videos I put myself as the teacher in an elementary level class. Flipping the classroom is extremely new to me on an elementary level, but it is not new to me on a college level. I doubt this will be very useful to me as a teacher because I don't expect a child below third grade to watch a video pertaining to the following days work. Although I do agree with homework being given out after instruction, class time is used specifically for instruction and that is how I plan to use it when I am a teacher myself.