Sunday, September 25, 2011

Blog Assignment 5

Characteristics of a 21st century teacher


Don't teach your kids this stuff! Please?

Dr. Scott McLeod is the founding director of UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). CASTLE is the nations only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of schools. He is also an associate professor of education leadership at the University of Kentucky and has been named a "Leader in Learning" by the cable industry. He also wrote this post on his blog about what not to teach your students. When I first began reading I though he really was being negative about technology and was expressing his dislike for it. His sarcastic style of writing really allowed him get his point across. My position on his argument is that I think technology is very important in the classroom and should be implemented in every classroom. I do also think that using paper and pencil is still necessary in some situations. However technology allows students to be even more creative and innovative thinkers as they can share their knowledge and ideas with others around the world. Technology can help to facilitate learning and those who use it now will have advantages in the long run overs those who don't.

The iSchool Initiative
and ZeitgeistYoungMind's Entry

In this video Travis Allen is proposing an alternative more technology based way of school. He has proposed this due to numerous budget cuts and growing classroom sizes. He bases his idea off of the iTouch and all the educational applications it has to offer. In the iSchool initiative plan each student would have and iTouch modified for school and there would no longer be a need for paper or pens.Some of the applications that would be used on the iTouch are email, chemical touch,US constitution, USA Presidents, star walk, formulae, recorder, calculator, graphing calculator, notes and much more. The most interesting app to me is the classics app which has textbooks, workbooks and all other kinds of books on it that are accessible to read on the iTouch for each student.
I think he has a neat and innovative idea about how to put iTouch technology into the classroom. There seem to be an endless amount of educational apps that can be very valuable to aiding in each student's education. However I do think that there will still be a need for paper and pen because not everything can be done on the iTouch and students still need to apply what they learn. Another thing is what happens if the iTouch crashes with all your school work on it, id there any kind of backup for it? I think he has a great idea and I am going to look into it some more to see just exactly how it has been put into action and how well it is doing.

The ischool initiative logo


Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir

I thought it was amazing how all those people could sing the same song together and never have rehearsed it together in person before. It sounded amazing and just like they had been practicing for weeks. This use of the internet is very neat because it show cases talents from around the world and puts them all together. It is just another example of how technology can create amazing things and open doors to endless possibilities. Technology in the classroom can allow us to explore places and talk to people without even having to travel there. This is just another great example of how technology can enhance learning, even in music.

Teaching in the 21st Century

This video really had some great points about how to gear teaching towards the 21st century. Robert's thinks that teaching in the 21st century is not just giving facts, dates, and formulas because kids can find information anywhere, anytime. Do they know how to use different sources to find information? This is where we as teachers come into play by showing kids how to use different internet sources like google and twitter to their advantage. Robert's feels that we need to challenge and ask questions like: use any resource to answer questions such as how many grains of sand are in a square mile on the beach, or why does the sky appear blue? Answer those questions and use data to back them up, this is teaching in the 21st century by using technology to our advantage and not working against it. I think her position in the video is a valid one because information is everywhere and accessible to everyone. Further more we do not need to just spit our facts and content we need to challenge students to discover knowledge on their own. She also believes in engaging students in work rather than just entertaining them. Learning that is engaging is more active and will stick with them long term.
This will affect me as an educator because I will need to be creative with how I challenge students to think and answer questions. I need to teach them that there are many sources of information in the world. They need to be taught what valid information is and how to use it to their advantage in learning. Teaching will become more interactive and the knowledge base that students will be exposed to is tremendous. Teachers need to be there to guide and facilitate learning through technology in the 21st century.

3 comments:

  1. Great post! I agree with everything you said about the iSchool initiative. It is a great idea and would also save the teacher and lot of time and effort. I think my favorite part of this assignment was the video of the virtual choir. It left me speechless. It is amazing how that many people from all over the world can sing the same song and sound that good without ever practicing or performing together in person.
    -Amelia

    ReplyDelete
  2. Many students didn't get the sarcasm and interpreted McLeod's post literally.

    In your response to the question Who is Dr. McLeod? you come dangerously close to plagiarizing. You may even have technically committed it. If you copy and paste more than 5 words without acknowledgement and without putting the copied words in quotation marks, you have technically committed plagiarism. Plagiarism is a very serious offense. You are not the only person who has done this for this assignment. I will attribute it this time to a lack of understanding about how to avoid plagiarism. It is especially important that anyone entering the teaching profession understands what plagiarism is, avoids it in their personal work, and can teach others about it. The copy and paste world in which we now live makes it very easy to do. Careers can easily be ruined through plagiarism. Watch the Class Blog for additional information and assignments.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you I will be more careful next time, and just to let you know I did not copy and paste it. I wrote the information down on a pice of paper and wrote some stuff word for word and then forgot to put it into my own words and summarize it.

    ReplyDelete