Blog Post #8

This Is How We Dream

One of our assignments this week was to watch This is How We Dream: Part 1 and Part 2 by Richard Miller. In his videos, Miller talks about how we are living in an age of change. Printed materials are becoming a thing of the past, while it is becoming more popular and more practical to read articles, books, and papers online and through computer screens. Miller explains that "this is the time to be engaged in the work of literacy." Miller also makes a point how we are able to go online and get real time updates on news stories and other things. He uses the presidential election of 2008 as an example, saying that, at the time, you could go online to a major news station's website and get immediate updates on which candidates were getting the votes in various counties and states. He also explains that by having academic material posted online, that material can live on for much longer than printed materials can, and you can also share online documents "infinitely", as he put it.

Miller continues on to explain that another incremental change is that through the internet, we are able to collaborate with other people using networking technology to create projects and write articles. Miller stresses that "ideas don't belong to us individually, but they belong to us as a culture." He gives iTunes U as an example of this. People can find lectures and information on all kinds of different subjects through iTunes U. However, Miller explains that iTunes U can be used to make wonderful compositions, but a lot of the lectures people are downloading haven't gone through any post-production work at all, and that's disappointing. The internet allows us to share and distribute ideas instantly, and it holds so much potential for academics, but for some reason, our culture isn't fully embracing it yet.

One of Miller's most important quotes in the video is, "We as educators must be in the business of sharing ideas freely." As a future teacher, I must be prepared to be able to write and share ideas using multimedia, and I will be expected to teach my students how to do this, as well. At the moment, no, I not yet fully prepared to write using multimedia, but that's what EDM310 is helping me learn to do. By the end of this course, I will know so much more about multimedia and education technology than I knew before taking this course, and I will be better qualified to teach it to my own students. With the speed technology is advancing now, it's possible that even when I do become a teacher, my students will know more about the current technology and how to use multimedia than I will. But as I've stressed before in my blog posts, it is my job to keep myself up to date and well informed on new technology so I can teach my students to the best of my ability.

Carly Pugh's Blog Post #12

A past student of EDM310 named Carly Pugh was assigned to create an assignment that Dr. Strange would deem worthy enough of being used for future EDM310 students. In her post, simply titled Blog Post #12, Carly describes that her assignment would be for everyone to create a YouTube playlist containing videos that reflect your views and philosophies as a future teacher. She gives a more detailed list of the types of videos she wants included in the playlists as well as guidelines for how many videos need to be included in the playlist and how many of the listed topics should be included. She then asks students to explain why they chose their videos and how they reflect their teaching philosophy. Carly even did this assignment herself, and you can see her playlist here.

Carly goes on to talk about some of the videos she included in her playlist, such as this one. I think Carly's suggested assignment comes pretty close to what Richard Miller talked about. Carly encourages students to use multimedia (in this case, YouTube) to describe their teaching philosophies and explain some of the things they have learned from EDM310. She encourages students to essentially use multimedia to share their ideas and beliefs, which is exactly what Miller hopes our future educators and other people will do.

EDM310 Is Different

Dr. Strange has made sure to explain to us that EDM310 is different from other classes we have taken. He told us to watch two videos at the beginning of the course. The first video, The Chipper Series narrates the story of a girl named Chipper who is taking EDM310, but she procrastinates all the time and eventually drops out of school. She doesn't get anywhere with her life, and after many failures, she has a change of heart and decides to go back to school and do better this time. The second video is EDM310 for Dummies. The video is a "commercial" advertising the book EDM310 for Dummies, and how the book will help you improve your knowledge and performance in EDM310.

If I were to create videos, I would definitely make a video telling people not to stress out too much over EDM310. I would explain that even though EDM310 is a lot of work, it's extremely helpful and it will really help you out in the long run. I remember at the beginning of the course, I was terrified of this class because Dr. Strange told us we would have to spend 9 hours per week on the material. But once I began the work, I realized it wasn't as bad as I feared it would be, and I've learned so much already. I'd also make some video tutorials on how to use Blogger and Twitter.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

The video Learn to Change, Change to Learn really makes a great point about our lack of technology in schools. Students typically aren't allowed to bring cell phones or tablets or even iPods to school, yet these are all wonderful tools that can aid our education! These are all tools that encourage creativity, and yet they're not allowed in schools, and students sometimes even get punished for bringing or using them. Instead of churning out SATs and other standardized tests for students to take, we should let their creativity flow. When these students get out in the real world and get jobs, they won't be approaching their jobs like they approach standardized testing. Their jobs will require creativity!

We don't need to focus on teaching kids to remember information and facts. We need to teach kids to find information, do research, and use that information to collaborate with others and solve problems. We need to create schools that teach children to embrace their creativity and to care about things, like their culture. The quote that really stood out to me was, "it's the death of education, but it's the dawn of learning." It's definitely time for a revolution in our education system, and we can start by teaching kids how to learn.

Scavenger Hunt 2.0

For this part of the assignment, we first watched the video Web 2.0 Intro, which gave us some insight into what we were about to do. After watching the video, our scavenger hunt began!

The first thing I found was a website that's similar to Twitter and Facebook. It's a website called Edmodo, and it provides a social platform for teachers. On the website, you can set up a classroom for your students, and you can post notes, alerts, assignments, quizzes, and even polls! The interface looks really similar to facebook, so it's easy to learn how to navigate, and since it looks like facebook, it would be much more appealing to students. I could use Edmodo to update my students on when assignments are due, and I can use it to post assignments and quizzes. I could even create a poll to find out how well my students are progressing and gain feedback on their opinions of the material being covered.

The second tool I found was the website Make Beliefs Comix, which allows you to make your own comic strips! Here's a comic I made!

The third tool I found is a website to create polls, called Poll Everywhere. I could definitely use this site in my classroom for my students to give feedback on the material being covered. Here's a poll I created with it: