Blog Post # 2

1. Did You Know?

By: John Strange 

The facts in this video really blew my mind and caused me to do some research of my own on some of these topics so that I could see for my self that these statements were true and also why they are or are going to be true. The first part of the video talks about the population of China and India verses the population of the United states in many situations. These situations being: that 25% of India with the highest IQ's outnumbers the entire population of the United States, India has more K-12 honors students than all of the K-12 students in the U.S., and also that in 2025 the number of English speaking Chinese is likely to exceed the number of native English speakers in the rest of the world. I found on Google that these are all true because of their population number verses the population number in the U.S. The population numbers of these countries is as followed: India has 1.22 billion, China has 1.3 billion, while the United States only has roughly 312.8 million. This leads me to the answer that the statements above are true because these two Asian country have nearly half of the worlds population. 

The second part of the video talks about the number of You Tube videos watched every minute, number of SMS messages that are sent in the same minute, number of Google searches made every minute, the number of people whom own a computer, and many of things involving numbers and technology. It is impressive how far the world has come with the development of technology and the effects that it has had and is going to have on the world.There is no telling what the world is going to be like in 50 or even 20 years from now. The facts that were found in the above paragraph are easily gathered because of the access that we have to researchers facts that can be view through today's technology.  In the last part of the video it ask its views (teachers or teachers to be) what could possibly be a teachers role? Is it to prepare your students for jobs in 2022? Is it to prepare your students to know how to  use technology  that does not even exist yet? I believe that the answer to those questions is yes. We as teachers should be well educated on how to use  different forms of technology that could help our students to be well prepare for their life and experiences that they may have ahead of them the best way that we possibly can. 

2. Mr. Winkle Wakes

By: Matthew Needleman

This video is about a man named Mr. Winkle who wakes up from a 100 year nap to a whole new world. I can not even imagine the feelings that he was experiencing as he was seeing the development and changes that had happened to the world that he once new. These changes were from the the new models/looks of cars,to the new road construction,  architecture of buildings, and even jobs. All of these were a result of the growth of technology over those many years that Mr. Winkles had been sleeping. 

At the end of the movie Mr. Winkle found one place in this new world that he was comfortable and this was the school. The school was filled with all of the same things that were once in his school many years ago. From the teachers lectures to the kids desk, to even the chalk boards  were all things that made him feel at home. Then all of a sudden he saw a strange looking piece of technology that he had never seen before. This strange device was a computer that was sitting in the back collecting dust. I think that the point Matthew Needleman was trying to make of this is that technology has developed for a reason thus to further our knowledge on things that we use to not have access to before. It is sad but true that just like in the video teachers these days do not use or even know how to use computers or even other forms of technology. They are here for us to use and to help teach and prepare others in ways that were not possible 100 years ago.

3.Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity

By: Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson said many things that I will personally keep stored in my brain for all the years I will be teaching. . He said " Kids starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. No one even knows what technology is going to be like in even five years but we are suppose to educate them for it". With all of the paper work, school board visits, requirements, and dead lines there is little to no time for creativity. We as teachers are suppose to be able to use what we have been provided to help educate our children. Yes we may be provided with and educated on things like the smart board but we are also provided with little time to be able to use them. The way that most students are taught is " educating them out of creativity" or as Dr. Strange puts it, teachers use the burp back method instead of using a learning method that to most comes naturally, called creativity. The basis of teaching is math, language, humanities, and then art. Kids are educated from waist up and then hands. One major thing that I 100% agreed with Ken Robinson on was that these days degrees are not worth anything anymore. Before if you had a degree you were almost guaranteed a job unless you personally chose not to work. Unlike then, we now live in a dog eat dog type of a world where there is only so many jobs available. This is why it is important for children to have an extra piece of knowledge that can maybe one day help them get hired.

Students with a learning disability are very close to my heart. I fully agreed with Dr. Robinson's story about the choreographer that could not sit still. I was diagnosed with ADHD in the second grade. This has caused school to be a terrible challenge for me. Like the choreographer all I needed was to get up and interact with other students and do creative hands on activities. Rather than being forced to sit down and learn the "burp back method" way. There is a such thing as "ADHD" and some children really do suffer from it. There are also children out there who really are not ADHD, but their parents or teachers do not want to put up with them acting like children so they decide to drug them and think that  is going to solve the problem. There is one way that all children can learn and that is through creativity, they just have to be given the chance.

4. A Vision for 21st Century Learners

I personally believe that children in the twenty first century are provided with some amazing forms of technology that could provide them with an outstanding and fun way to learn. This can be done through computers or other forms of technology and being able to interact with their teacher and fellow students through them. I agree that is a form of educating that will help program what the student has learned into their brain, hopefully to stay, and not like the "burp back method" where they just cram information from a lecture or a chapter from a text book for a test and then forget it the very next day. While I do agree with the above I also think that technology has had a negative effect. Children from the 21st century have learned to rely on technology a little too much to where some only pick up a book if it is something that is required by school. Leisure reading is also something that teachers and parents should motivate the children to do. Books are full of information that one may not learn in a classroom. Reading can also help with spelling techniques. There is a happy medium with all things, you as a teacher just have to figure out how to properly distribute the time between the two.

5. Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts:

This is an amazing form of teaching that I hope to one day bring into my classroom. The fact that the students were able to learn through experience and for this to have been such a huge success is proof that technology and creativity is a positive form of teaching. Ms. Davis's form of teaching is a lot like EDM310.  This is one class that I actually look forward to doing the "homework."  I know that what I learn in EDM310 will forever be programmed in me, since I am actually having to learn on my own and teach myself and not have a teacher drilling me with facts.

I cannot wait to be able to put these techniques to use in my classroom one day. Students have the opportunity to work together and feel like they actually accomplished something at the end. Instead of classes like   Ms. Davis's that are focused on students learning on their own through a program on a computer that forces them to work together should be mandatory at all schools. These programs allow students to go out side of the normal learning box and actually put their own creative touch on something.