"Rethinking Education" Ch. 10 Reflection

In today's generation students rely on and use technology for almost everything, including education, personal interests, communication, and the list goes on. Chapter 10 of our text recaps the entire book in one chapter. This chapter pulls all of the main ideas and concludes the book by stating how technology impacts us as educations, as well as our future students. The chapter first recaps why technology is important in learning. Technology is being used in a way to help our students learn by using games, and we present our information using SMARTboards in the classroom. Distance education is also becoming more and more popular among students. Distance learning gives students the ability to interact with students from across the world on common interests. Technology gives people the ability to be lifelong learners, where education is not complete after the 12th grade making it possible to learn throughout your lifetime. Technology gives students the option for non-traditional schooling such as home schooling. People are able to be learners in the workplace learning where technology is used to train and educate employees throughout their career. Businesses are turning to virtual games where the employees are given different situations with virtual customers. Technology gives people the motivation to learn what they want and what they are interested in. Students are being encouraged to explore their interests for themselves and take control of their learning. By students taking control of their own learning, they are preparing themselves for their future careers. Students are able to focus on areas that will benefit them in the future as employees.

This book has opened my mind has influences me to think outside of the box. Prior to learning this book I had thought that educating our future students should be done in the same manner as I was taught growing up. I have come to realize that although I feel as if there are some areas of education where technology should be drifted away from, many and most of the areas of education should use technology. In the next generation of workers, almost all of their careers will be focused on or around technology. Students should be comfortable with using technology and should be up to date with the current technology. As teachers we also need to stay updated. Since technology is always changing and improving, we as educators need to be educated as well. Although I now see many pros to using technology, I still stick by some of my feeling about technology. I believe that students need to know communication skills. This generation of students is depending on technology to communicate, using social networking sites such as facebook, myspace, and twitter. As educators, we need to stress the importance of face to face communication as well as make sure students master some of the "old school" ways of education, such as penmanship and reading out of a textbook. There are many opinions about using technology in education, and there is no correct answer to this issue, but whatever it is that makes you feel like you are doing the best possible job as an educator is the method you should stand by.

Contemporary Issues Podcast Reflection

For my Podcast I used an article I found on CNN.com, click here for the article. I also used lead in and lead out music from http://www.incompetech.com/. Lastly, my sound effect came from the website Cartoon Sound Effects. My podcast was submitted to the Dropbox on D2L.

I spent a lot of time creating this podcast. Since I have never done a podcast before and have no prior experience working with Audacity, I had to spend a long time trying to figure out how to use the program. I also spend a bit of time searching for an interesting article. The easiest part of making this podcast was writing the script. The hardest part was recording myself because the audio was really scratchy and would cut in and out at random times. This was frustrating because I could never record a clip without the audio skipping slightly. I ended up just accepting that my computer was not the best for recording podcasts.

After finally completing this podcast I have realized that I would never really use this in my classroom for a recording of contemporary issues, but it might be useful as a tool to record class lessons, activities, or projects. Podcasts would be useful to post online for the students to recap what was done in class both that day and throughout the year. As a future elementary school teacher I could see podcasts being more beneficial for parents. It would be a cool tool to use for teachers to post a podcast online for students to listen to. Parents would listen to in class activities as well as being informed of what was accomplished throughout the day at school.

"Rethinking Edcation" Ch. 9 Reflection

Chapter nine of "Rethinking Education" talked about what technology means in the lives of today's generation of children. Children are turning to technology to learn more about topics they are interested in and parents and teachers need to be aware of what and how our students and children are looking into outside of school and home. Children are now becoming more educated a knowledgeable about technology can their parents and teachers. One way of decreasing the literacy gap between parents and their children is for parents to understand what their child is using these technologies for. Most often the parents are the ones who provide a number of technologies for their children but have little to no clue what they are used for or how to use them. Parents need to take action and become familiar with new technologies. It is recommended for parents to pick up their child's video game controller and have their child teach them how to use it and how to play the game. Parents should also get an instant messenger account, whether it is on their cell phone or on the computer so they are able to connect and communicate with their child. Many children in today's culture would much rather send a short text message as a way of communicating rather than picking up a phone and using it to make a phone call. Parents should also encourage their child to join online communities where they are able to interact and communicate with others with the same interests. Children are very unique and open minded and might come up with an idea that an adult might never think about. By joining online communities and blogging students are able to gain skills that might be useful in their future careers. In today's society jobs are being created based on technology; years ago these jobs would have not existed. By using technology students are preparing themselves for their future career, even if the career field is currently non-existent. Our children and students are creating jobs for their own futures.

As a future teacher I would encourage my students to share their knowledge on technology with both myself as well as their parents. In today's culture our children seen to be much more knowledgeable when it comes to technology than teachers and parents and it is important for us to all get on the same page. As a teacher I would also be curious about different technologies my students are using and test them out for myself. I now understand that the technologies our students are using are creating jobs for their futures. I would like to test out different games to see which ones I feel are the most valid for my students to use. Because in today's culture it would be near difficult to pull a student away from video games, I would use my knowledge to suggest certain games for them to use, where they can gain as many skills as possible from the game. Because technology is pulling students away from books and board games I would purposely assign some homework assignments that require reading a book and doing other homework without using technology. Something I found surprising in this chapter was that by students joining gaming communities, video games can actually improve one's vocabulary by providing opportunities to develop new sources of vocabulary in useful ways. This chapter has made me realize that rather than fighting our children and students to move away from technology, we as parents and teachers should learn from them and then connect with them by using the technology they use.

"Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts" Ch. 10/Epilogue Reflection

The read/write web had drastically changed the world of education. Students are able to find literally anything and everything they are interested in on the web. This creates the idea of lifelong learning. What used to fill the backpacks of students are now easily accessible on the web. Students are able to share their work with an unlimited audience and receive feedback from others. Teachers can use technology to assign projects. Projects used to consist of a large piece of construction paper using markers to fill out the appropriate information. In today's age of technology, teachers are able to assign projects that can be done on the computer which gives students the ability to creatively use text, picture, graphics, video, audio, and other types of media to demonstrate their knowledge on a particular topic. Students are also able to connect with others with the same interests as them. Technology creates bonds and connections between people, even with those they have never met. Students are able to access the web at anytime, anywhere, which leads us to the idea of 24/7 learning. Now that students are able to learn anywhere and everywhere, the school day does not only consist of 8 hours, 5 days a week. The read/write web has the ability to open up many doors for both our future students as well as ourselves as educators and exploring these options will benefit both you and your students.

As a result of this text I am now a more creative thinker when it comes to being a future teacher. Prior to this reading I felt as if the standardized traditional schooling is the way to go but after reading about the many perks and tools when using technology I have found myself with a different mind set about using technology in the classroom. I have finally realized that there is no correct answer to using technology as an educator. After completing this book I have finally understood where I stand with this whole debate. I have shifted from the skeptic’s side to the middle, between the skeptics and advocates. I will defiantly implement technology into my classroom but make sure that my students don't depend on it for everything. I still believe that knowing mental math is important without using a calculator as well as knowing simple facts without having to look it up on the web. I will stress to my students how to properly use technology, stressing the fact that not everything you read is true, and not everyone you meet is a good person and you can't be naive. Overall this book has made me rethink where I stand with technology and has given me great ideas about how to effectively use it in my classroom.

Screencast Link and Reflection

http://www.screencast.com/users/knick938/folders/Default/media/8fbe1b73-0c0e-4f16-b294-eb75cbe333b6


Reflection:
I exerted a lot of effort into this task. I probably stressed about this project more than I should have. It took a lot of time to become familiar with the website I was doing a SWAT analysis of. I had never even heard of "Glogster" before this assignment so much of my time was just simply trying to figure out what the program had to offer and how to use it. I feel as if I totally over thought this project and when preparing for the recording I found myself being unable to meet the time requirement- not because I couldn't meet 5 minutes, but because I was going WAY over. I also found it really frustrating and difficult to record the screencast without any errors and the most frustrating part is that when a mistake was made I had to redo the entire screencast rather than just editing the piece. It was also hard to get comfortable with recording my own voice. After numerous amounts of mistake ridden recordings, I finally felt some comfort and was able to get a final recording. I thought that creating this screencast was very difficult but overall will benefit me in my teaching career.

Creating this screencast has overall benefited me as a future teacher because I have learned a new tool to use in my classroom and now have been able to experiment with it a bit. I have also learned how to do a SWAT analysis, which I have never done before. Not only have I learned how to use Jing for creating a screencast, I have also learned how to use Glogster, both in which I will implement into my future classroom. Overall I feel the most beneficial aspect of this project was getting used to talking, and hearing myself talk into a microphone. Before this project I was totally uncomfortable with hearing a recording of my voice but now after experimenting with Jing I am more comfortable.