Monday, March 1, 2010

Feb 28th

This is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2
If you think about how in the past when your parents and grandparents where in school, you will come across a ton of difficulties that they ran into that modern technolgy has made a hundred times more convienent for its users. Take for instance how those generations had to find information by going to a local or school library and search for books that might contain the answer they need. This process was extremely time consuming especially if the libraries didnt have the books necessary. Or what about when they wanted to communicate to a friend or relative that lived overseas? They had to pay some kind of charge just for a simple conversation of "how have you been".

Thanks to technology, these issues have become minor inconviences. Now all you need is a computer and internet access and you can enjoy looking up plenty of information and talk to people all over the world about any subject. Think about all the great speeches that were recorded, like Dr. Kings "I have a dream" speech. People in my generation could never hear it without the use of technology. It enables us to experience events that we were not able to witness.

In our blog assisgnment it asked if we will be prepared to write with multimedia and will our students be able to. I know that multimedia technolgy could be very useful to me as a teacher and as a learner so i am trying to absorb everything i can from my EDM310 class because it is showing me a whole new way to communicate, teach, and learn. My students will most likely be able to use multimedia because as technology assimulates into the classes, they will be familiar with it at an earlier age.


Networked Student
Being connected to millions of individuals can have tremendous advantages. You can communicate with the minds of people who are already in the career you want to be in or with people who are trying to get into the career. Either way you can all learn from eachother, building off of what the other one knows to construct a good foundation of education principles and techniques.

Connectivism can be very beneficial but i wonder if it will effectively teach our students alone. Putting the sole responsibility on the student to find information can backfire because you never know who the student is networking with. It could be someone who isn't who they say they are which is a major problem when communicating with people on the internet.

This style of learning also changes the role of the teacher from a primary source of knowledge to a educational guider and a model of they way to build your personal learning network. With me being a P.E. teacher, I'm sure that they number of students i have could prevent me from making sure every student knows exactly what they're doing. I could use a network of instructional videos that teach students certain sports and/or about the body and how it works as a system, so students can learn on their own time in case they didn't get everything in class.

Toward A New Future of Whatever
We have so much freedom of choice in America. Dr. Wesch spoke about the reasons why people in my generation feel so confident and impowered. I can see how this feeling of importance and deserving of attention and recognition has been installed into our brains by the media. They sell us electronics for our pleasure, produce bigger vehicles with more power just for us, and want us idolize music artist for their "its all about me/i do what i want" rockstar attitudes. So i think it has completely spoiled us. But i'm right along with them so i have to point the finger at myself too.

The Media is going to have a enormous affect on us and our students as teachers. Its going to determined what's acceptable to wear, what's acceptable to eat, what's acceptable to drive, etc etc. In other words, you and your students will be judged through the media's standards.

Personally I enjoy using and being envolved with media tools because you can feel apart of a world much larger than your small town local friendly faces you see everyday.

1 comment:

  1. I agree that technology has really spoiled us. We have so many advantages that our parents and grandparents never had. I am very interested to see what technology will be like for our children and grandchildren.

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