Blog Assignment 3

"It's Not About the Technology" by Kelly Hines
I found this to be a very interesting title when I fist looked at it. This whole class is about technology and now were are reading something that is saying it's not about technology? After reading I understand the point Ms. Hines was making. Technology is not all that needs to go into teaching. It is an important component however if we do not posses certain skills as a teacher then we cannot fully use technology as a learning tool. These 4 skills are: Teachers must be learners, Learning and teaching are not the same thing, Technology is useless without good teaching, and be a 21st century teacher without the technology. Teachers must be learners and not just through required workshops and readings we must emerse ourselves in learning. I completely agree with this because how can we expect our students to learn and expand upon it if we are only spitting out information that we learned and could be outdated. Learning is a continuous process and the effort must be put in to be good learning role models if we want your students to be learners as well. Learning and teaching are not the same thing is equivalent to a physics problem that if an object does not move, no matter how much force has been applied, no work has been done. In order to learn we must use good teaching practice to help students meet goals for learning. Each person will have different goals for learning and that is ok. Learning need to be specific to each individual. We all learn at different rates and I agree that we need to set goals for our learning. Technology is useless without good teaching because a teacher can allow a student to use technology but if they are not innovative and proactive with technology then money is wasted. This is so true for example most of us thought twitter was for people to tell about what they ate and what they were doing, but because of good teaching we found out how it can be a valuable educational resource. Teachers need to lead their students in the correct direction with technology and show them how it can be used as a valuable resource. Be a 21st century teacher without the technology is saying that we as teachers need to challenge our students to be innovative and creative thinkers even without technology. Take what you the students are learning and have them apply it to their own life. I think that it is imperative to teach students how to be creative without the use of technology. When you take a teacher who embodies all of these skills and then add technology into the mix the possibilities are endless.


Is It Ok To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? by Karl Fisch
Karl Fisch is making a stance that all teachers need to be technologically literate. I think that he has made a very strong argument in favor of having teachers understand technology. How can we expect our student's to be technologically literate if we as teachers are not? When he says that if a school turns out students who are technologically illiterate they should have the right to their license and funding questioned. I think this statement should be changed to say that we need to help these schools have the means to turn out technologically literate students. I do see the point Fisch is making about how important it is to be technologically literate. He also goes on to make the statement that being a teacher in todays world who is technologically illiterate is like being a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read or write. He says it might be a somewhat harsh point he is making but when you really think about it, it does make sense. When new things are introduced into the realm of learning that are valuable we need to embrace them and understand how they work in order to implement them into the classroom. I think it's awesome how this post won most influential blog for 2007. I really see how it could make a lot of teachers question how technologically literate they really were and if they even implemented it into their classroom.

Gary's Social Media Count
When I clicked on the link and it opened the page I was amazed by what I saw. The numbers were changing so fast I couldn't believe it. It really makes you see how much the internet, technology and social media are used and it's broken down to the second. The numbers keep going up by the thousands every second it seems. This is evidence of how popular technology is in todays society.
This means that as a teacher we need to understand how social media networks work and how to properly use technology. This social media count means that our professional careers as teachers need to involve technology. People are using technology in their daily lives and if correctly used in the classroom it can open doors to all kinda of learning possibilities.

A Vision of Student's Today
This video was kind of similar to the "Did You Know" video we watched last week. It was definitely attention grabbing material. I thought that this video had a lot of truth in it how it depicted the life of a student. A teachers point of view on this video would vary from the student in several ways. The teachers cannot put themselves into the students shoes and really figure out how each individual student learns. Everyone learns in a different way and a teacher may look at this video and say how can technology be the answer if some people don't like technology? Teachers need to use both technology and other resources in the classroom and teach students the benefits of both. The class material needs to better relate to daily lives of students or things they may encounter later on in the future.
I didn't really understand how the video said that a lot of people feel that technology was the answer and then it showed the students who brought lap tops to class but stayed on facebook or other things not related to class. I think if a teacher implements technology into the classroom and creates a more engaging learning environment. Technology, However, is not the full answer if you look back to Kelly Hines post "It's Not About the Technology." We need to examine all avenues of how to incorporate technology into learning in a way that both students and teacher can benefit from it. This video brings up so many questions and to every person who watches it will have a different opinion about it. I read some of the comment on the video and one person said the best student is one who THINKS, another person said that every generation of college aged students are trying to make a change for something. I see this video as a way of students thinking about how to change learning and make it more interactive and relevant to life.