Blog Post #5

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?

Dr. Scott Mcleod, is very insightful on his post Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?. I feel as though he had a sarcastic attitude throughout the whole post. I loved it. I still feel as though we should keep the classic pen and paper in schools but at the same time, we need to focus on technology. As our students grow older more and more technology is going to be developed and it is our job to insure that they are prepared for this. Still learning to use paper and pencils for math is essential. Developing countries do not yet have the technology that we do and it is important for our students to learn "old fashion" methods as well.

The iSchool Initiative

Travis Allen, at the time of his YouTube video, was a young high school student. First of all I have to give him credit that, even though he was just short of graduation, he believes in providing this technology and way of learning to future high school students. Secondly, I love the idea. The more and more I become involved with EDM310, the more I want to learn about new technology that is available for students. But, I secretly don't want my students to know more about technology than I do. The iTouch seems like a great and resourceful tool, however, I feel as though the iPad might be sightly more useful due to the size.

Travis Allen, suggested removing paper, pencils, copy machines and textbooks. As I stated in the previous post, I still think that we should keep those items around, well maybe dispose of the copy machine but we need to have a back up method in case a student looses their iSchool or perhaps it breaks. 

Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir
The virtual choir by Eric Whitacre. All I can say at this point is "wow". The idea behind this blows my mind. Now to be fair I'm sure the recording and blending of voices and sounds over the internet has been done for many years now but seeing it in this format makes it feel completely different. This presentation was so simple yet completely complex. After I learned that the students had never met, made me appreciate this even more.

Teaching in the 21st Century

I agree with Kevin Roberts views in his video, Teaching in the 21st Century. Teachers are steadily becoming less of a source for information, and more of a "filter" for information. Wikipedia is a widely used source for students to gather information. Due to the fact that anyone can post anything on it, however, makes it to where it is not allowed to be used in a works cited page. That is where we come in. Our new role is to teach the children to take the "facts" and cross reference them with other sites to determine the validity of the information.
It used to be that we were the publishers for children's minds. They entered our classroom with little knowledge to no knowledge of what we were teaching them. Somewhat of a blank slate for us to imprint what we felt was important for them to know at a certain age. Now it seems as though we are taking on more of an editorial role in their lives. Proofing the information they have obtained via technological means.

Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets has a lot of resources that can be used by parents and educators. I have to small children that will begin preschool this coming school year, so I mostly looked at the preschool section. In my search I found several ways to teach preschoolers the fundamentals of reading. This website offers games, suggestions and books specialized for your child's specific area. I would highly recommend this site to parents and teachers; I know I will use it in the future.