According to his website he is an Associate Professor of Educational Administration at Iowa State University. Also the Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). Then I was also surprised to find that he was also a co-creator of the Did You Know? 3.0 video we watched for our first blog assignment.
His strong feelings in "Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please" now make much more sense. Not that I didn't agree with him already. My interpretation was that children/students who's parents/teachers don't teach them to be "technologically literate" they are directly effecting on how successful they will be in the future or how many opportunities they will have. It's simple, in the near future the more technologically savvy we are the better chance we have to be successful. Teachers should feel a direct responsibility to these future students and should do everything in their power to ensure their ability to be successful.
In the video The iSchool Initiative Travis proposes a plan for all the financial cuts going on in the education system today. He talks about the costs of things in school like copies, paper, pencils, etc and how money could be saved by using the iTouch and it's applications. He goes even further to propose and iSchool plan.
I see a couple problems with his plan and that would be the costs of the iTouch. One for every student and one for every teacher is going to add up really fast. Then there's the question of who supplies the iTouch? The school? The parents and teachers? I definitely agree with Travis that technology should be used but I think we first need to implement more of the technology that is already available in the schools before we start asking them to buy more. The iTouch plan will not work if teachers first aren't willing to use technology.
The video Watch the Lost Generation was very interesting. The creator of the video starts off by reciting, line by line, a story of sorts of how in the future work will be more important than family, divorce will be inevitable, "money makes me happy", and that she is the lost generation. Then the video starts to sort of go backwards with the creator of the video reading each line but in opposite order. The same thing she said only with the lines in reverse order says that she will not be the lost generation, "money makes me happy" is a lie, divorce will not be inevitable, and that family will be more important that work.
I think the author was saying that we have to make a conscious effort and decision to do things that "change the world". I have to say that I agree with her. If we go by all the statistics alone of course we won't change anything. It's the people who try to change things or "make a difference" are the people who are remembered in history.
Eric Whitaker's Virtual Choir should show anyone the countless opportunities that can be found by using the internet. This was a beautiful vocal piece performed by over 100 people who never actually met but used the internet to post their contribution to the song, and then the composer put all the pieces together to make a beautiful song that sounds like it was performed in a recital hall with all of these singers present. But it wasn't performed in a recital hall with all the singers present. This is just a small show of the power of the internet.
I have also seen a similar video on youtube by the famous composer Tan Dun. His composition is called "Internet Symphony, Eroica".
Here is the video if you would like to take a look.
Christina,
ReplyDeleteScott Mcleod states that we need to educate our children on technology so they can be successful in the future. He is absolutely correct! We are in a technologically driven society. My daughters, 9 and 6, know a lot about technology at a young age. They can do so much more on a computer then I could ever do at their age. I think the future of education is going to include the use of technology and we as educators have to embrace that fact and learn how to learn technology so we can teach and learn from them as well.