Blog Assignment 5

Dr. Scott McLeod

When I began reading Dr. McLeod's post, Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff, Please?, I began to think he was a very closed minded type of guy. I knew I would be in complete disagreement with him. Luckily, at the end he had me on his side. There was a slight moment I was in agreement with the sexting and predators online. With that being said, I never once had the thought of a complete lock out from kids using computers or cell phones. The only thought to cross my head was to simply monitor what your kids did online and how they text people.He is completely right about the the students using new technology having a leg up on the ones that are kept away from such technologies. I back him one hundred percent on that stand.

Travis Allen

Travis made a video, The iSchool Initiative, that describes how he feels the school system can benefit from using digital teaching. He argument is to eliminate books, paper, pens, pencils and all of the ordinary teaching utensils. Everything would in the palm of a student's and teacher's hand. He feels this could eliminate many costs to the school by getting rid of the books, copy machines, and other costly equipment. He made a follow up video, called ZeitgeistYoungMind's Entry, which shows the support he has received for this idea.

As much as I would love to believe this could happen, I never see us in a world, at least in my lifetime, where there is a completely digital classroom. The idea sounds marvelous on paper, but I think you just more problems to education. I am completely supportive of integrating technology into the classroom, but only integrating, too much of anything is a bad thing. If you were to have a student read from a computer screen all day everyday, they would just want to read it from a book. I feel a good balance between the two will provide for the best success.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir

Simply amazing would be my only description of this video. If your have not seen this Virtual Choir please go view it right away. This only shows how far the would has truly come. People are more connected now than ever. I am afraid I must also feed my skepticism, unfortunately. Now by no means am I calling this video fake, in fact, I am quite sure it is not, but it does open up a thought to how someone can trick you over the Internet. just think a second on how equally easy it would have been to get a bunch of people to lip sync the song and edit a recording of a group singing it into the videos. Just some food for thought and to make people aware of that not everything on the web is truthful or accurate.

Kevin Roberts

In the video Teaching in the 21st Century, Roberts explains how technology has changed the thinking on learning. Teachers are no longer primary sources of information. Information is everywhere and can be obtained from many mediums. Teachers must now help filter what is good and bad information getting to students. If students are going to use these sources for information they must know how to decide what is good information and what someone is lying about. Before teachers can do that, they must first no how to do so themselves. I find inevitable that I must learn these things as an educator because students are going to use these mediums, whether the educator likes it or not.

Reading Rockets

I found that the ABCs of Teaching Reading section from the Reading Rockets website will help me in the future with children that struggle. It opened my eyes to just how far children can fall behind their peers in reading ability. It shows me that even in high school students can be far behind their expected reading level due to malteaching or the student may have hid their inability to read or read well. It lets me know as an instructor what signs to look for and how to cope with a student who cannot read to their expected level

There is also a very useful "how to" section. This can lend assists in many things. It helps teachers find low-cost books, perform an effective read aloud, and even set an in classroom library, just to name a few. This seems to be a great tool to any teacher that may feel stuck or confused about a problem.