Friday, January 25, 2013

Blog Post #2

Did You Know? 3.0- John Strange 2012 Version

As I began to watch the video, I found it difficult to wrap my brain around the numbers. It is hard to believe with all the early learning tools and programs in our country that our honor students would be outnumbered by India's honor students. Another mind blowing fact from the video is that "by 2025 the number of English-speaking Chinese is likely to exceed the number of native English speakers in the rest of the world." To my understanding, English is one of the easiest languages to learn and that is one of the reasons you see it all over the world.

Every day I continue to be amazed by all the technology we use every day. We live in the Information Age, at all times of the day people are finding new ways to interact with others. We have Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, text messages, etc; to communicate with each other. It is interesting to me to think how many people today have social anxiety and that it probably was not as common ten-fifteen years ago.

I wonder what technology I will use in my classroom ten years from now. Will the classroom still consist of smart boards and projectors or will there be some new technology that we have never heard of come available. Whether its new or old technology, I will be ready to prepare my students with the obstacles that lay ahead of them.

Mr. Winkle Wakes

This is a great funny video. It showed how our society has evolved technologically and our schools have been left on the back burner. This may be one of many reasons some countries honor students outnumber ours. The blame can be dished to our politicians and the schools themselves. Politicians today are cutting funds for schools that would allow them to afford better computers and other technology for the classroom. Some teachers can be blamed also. Some do not try to learn the new technology and refuse to use new methods of teaching.

Our schools must do a better job in funding and showing teachers how to use the technology. The latter, I believe, will fade out in the coming years. While old style teachers begin to retire, new teachers will replace them that know different methods of teaching and will be able to use new technology.

Sir Ken Robinson

I really enjoyed Ken Robinson on creativity. I believe creativity is very important in our lives. Living in the Information Age we are finding new ways to acquire knowledge. If we are educating children out of their creativity, then how will they ever take a chance to learn? Art has declined over the years and is not an importance in our school systems. A degree in art is not worth much in today's world, I think it is a shame.

I think it is very important to refocus ourselves on creativity. I struggle to come up with a reason because I was taught to be correct. We need to rethink our use of creativity and not downplay it. People say money is what makes the world go round, but I believe creativity does. If it was not for people's creativity then there would there would be no need for this EDM 310 class.

Pinterest

The article on how to use Pinterest in education is very useful. It can be used by teachers or students. Teachers can share lesson plans or ways to teach a subject. Students can find pictures or videos that may help on a certain project. Pinterest is very simple and well organized. That is why it would be a good tool for a teacher to remember when they are in the classroom.

Out of 20 best Pinterest boards, I picked Educational Technology. I believe this is the best board for a teacher in today's classroom to find new and creative ways to use technology. For example, I never thought of using a fake text app would be useful in a classroom. iFake Text can be used for History, English, and many other subjects.

2 comments:

  1. There are two things I noticed within your blog post that really stood out to me as questionable. The first is your statement about English being the easiest language to learn. Although there is not definite answer to what is the most difficult language to learn as a secondary language, English is considered very difficult to those who learn it as a secondary language. English; however, is so common because it is considered the universal language. Secondly, you stated: our honor students would be outnumbered by India's honor students. I believe you misunderstood exactly what the video was trying to say. The video claims that India's honor students out number the United States' students as a whole. These speaks on the population of India, not the intelligence.

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  2. carmen is correct. You misunderstood the comparative data on China, India and the United States. India has four times the population of the United States and China has five times the population of America, This means that the size of the population leads to the large numbers of "honor students" or English speakers when India or China are compared to the United States. You could also say that the 20 % of the population in China with the largest ears (or 25% of the population with the largest ears in India) outnumbers all of the people with ears of any size in the United States.

    Interesting.

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