Blog Post #2

Did You Know?

I found this video fascinating! I love cool facts, and it definitely had some very interesting ones. What I found most interesting/disturbing was predictions made that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the ENTIRE human species. That is just insane, and much closer than you think at first glance. I do feel better about it when I think that though this computer might exceed our capacity for computation, it can not exceed our capacity to show emotion. It might be "smarter" than we are, but it really cannot choose to use its intelligence for good/bad/other. The thing that unnerves me, though, it people are always capable of using technology for evil just as much as we are able to use it for good. For some reason, the movie Iron Man comes to mind.

The other thing I found interesting about this video is that it says the top 10 in demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. In merely six years, we made so much technological advance that the entire industry changed. This fact alone should motivate us to guide our students in the direction of being life long learners! If we adequately prepare them on how to teach themselves, no new technology will intimidate them. They will be equipped to jump right in and learn whatever it might be.

Mr. Winkle Wakes

While this video was an exaggeration to some degree, it was very effective in making its intended point clear. Mr. Winkle has slept for 100 years and woke up to find that almost everything has changed that he encounters in daily life. Everything is highly technical and there are advancements in nearly every field. Naturally, he is uncomfortable with the advances because they are hitting him all of the sudden. He goes on a search to find something familiar and comfortable, and is only able to find this in schools, because they have not kept up with the technological advances.

This is very sad, but true in most cases. Going back to the statement made in Did You Know?, it is crucial for educators to stay up on the most current technology so that we can truly prepare our students for the future. It is inevitable that they will encounter this stuff, and children learn so much more eagerly and easily than adults. It only makes sense to have schools as well equipped, if not more equipped than industries like health care. All doctors, after all, started out in an elementary school somewhere!

Importance of Creativity

Ken Robinson, the speaker in this video, is clearly very passionate about school children. The statement in this video that had the most impact on me was that we educate children from the waist up and then focus on their heads. Our society has focused so intently on science and math, that we have forgotten about the arts. Our education system seems to think that if you can't clearly define something on paper, you don't need to learn it. Robinson says that intelligence is dynamic, and that creativity comes about through interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things. This could not be more true! All of us learn differently, and we should expose our children to multiple ways to learn the same thing. Included with this is Mr. Robinson's theory that schools develop in children a fear of having the "wrong" answer, which leads to a dissolution of their natural creative instincts. We are afraid to be creative because we are afraid of being wrong, or worse - "different."

Robinson also speaks of the woman who went on to become the choreographer for the musical CATS. When she was in school, she was always wiggling and squirming and couldn't seem to learn as easily as other students. The teacher told her parents she had some sort of learning problem and sent her to a specialist. The specialist turned on the radio and left the room and she started dancing. She did not have a learning disability- she merely expressed herself differently. I think it is so important to incorporate music, dancing, art, etc. into the everyday classroom, especially at the elementary level. There are countless children who are being medicated for ADD and ADHD when the only thing "wrong" with them is that they are children and we expect them to sit still at their desks and behave all day long while we talk "at" them. They are going to absorb so much more when they are given an outlet for their natural excess energy! If we focus less on what we are trying to pack into their heads and more about teaching them to use their entire bodies to learn, they will learn and retain so much more.

Cecelia Gault

In this video, three false statements about creativity are revealed:

1. Only certain people are creative.

2. Creativity is only relative to design and advertising.

3. There is nothing you can do about your "lack" of creativity.

I am glad that these myths were dispelled! Blame it on my grandmother, but I am a firm believer that "can't never could." If you keep a positive attitude about a project, you can make it extraordinary. If you tell yourself you are not creative, then the only thing undermining your creativity is your bad attitude. As I have said already in this blog posts about other videos, we desperately need to address the issue of using the arts in the everyday classroom.

As far as what you can do about your "lack" of creativity, I think that just like we can exercise our bodies, we can exercise our brains to strengthen our creativity. If you engage in any sort of artistic activity at least a few times per week, you can keep ideas flowing.

Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts

In this video, a teacher from a very rural school is battling the stigma that technology is only found in more developed schools. She challenges her students every day to learn some new technology and she says that she is constantly learning something new from them. She is working to break the cycle of people from rural areas having to take on the same vocation that their parents do because nothing else is available to them.