Blog Post #3

Paige Ellis's Blog Assignment #12

For this assignment, I elected to leave a comment on the blog post that I was reviewing for C4C. I elected to complete the assignment this way because I felt overall the post I was commenting on was a quality post content-wise with just a few grammatical issues. If I felt the post needed more in-depth constructive criticism, I would have sent the blogger an e-mail so that I did not embarrass him/her and so I did not take up too much room in the comments section.

It's Not About the Technology

In this blog post, Kelly Hines makes a "blasphemous" statement about technology and 21st century education. She daringly claims that the key to education in the 21st century is not necessarily to have the most cutting edge technologies in the classroom, but to teach children to use critical thinking and creativity to approach the world around them.

The first point that Ms. Hines makes is that all teachers must be learners. "Teachers today must be perpetual learners who are invested in their professions. We must be up to date on current trends, research and tools. We must know what our students are doing and where they are coming from when they enter our classrooms. This learning cannot just include mandated workshops and occasional required readings. Teachers who want to be truly successful must be voracious and self-motivated in their pursuit of evoloving understanding." This quote really sums up the point she is making and my stance on this topic as well. It is important to learn from teachers who have been in the field a while because they have a plethora of practical experiences that can truly teach new educators some valuable things. These same teachers, though, must be willing to combine the aspects of teaching they have always used that are tried, tested, and true with new methods being taught today. This includes not only what they are required to learn through professional development seminars, but they must also go out in search of this new information and self-teach these methods.

The next point made is that learning is not equivalent to teaching. Just because you have "taught something over and over again" does not mean that this particular group of students understands the method you used to teach it. Every student learns differently and things we have taught a certain way thousands of times might need to be reevaluated and taught differently to help other students grasp the concept. As teachers, we must be willing to rethink our methods and constantly assess our performance.

Perhaps the point I most identify with is that technology is useless without good teaching. I have had the opportunity to be in several classes here at USA which were equipped with SMART Boards or other such technology which are being treated like expensive projector screens. With the limited experience I have personally using SMART Boards, I know they can do some pretty amazing things. It frustrates me to no end to have professors use the excuse of being "technologically illiterate" as to why they don't use this equipment. As was stated earlier, in order to be effective teachers, we have to be lifelong learners. These professors (one specifically in the College of Education) make me want to whack them in the head! They are in essence telling us that it is ok to be lazy and indifferent once we get our degrees, because we can still get a job.

Is It Okay to be a Technologically Illiterate Teacher?

In short: NOOOO!!!! Mr. Fisch discusses his frustrations on technological indifference. He likens it to his discussions with parents during his experience as a math teacher. He would have parent-teacher conferences with parents of students who were performing poorly in his class. The parents' would dismiss the lack of success their students were achieving by saying "Oh, yeah, I was never good at math either." He said this bothered him immensely because they almost seemed proud of this fact. He went on to say that the message they were sending to their student was just because they didn't understand something meant they didn't have to take the time to try. They could just smirk and claim genetic incompetence or some other tomfoolery. To Mr. Fisch, this was as unacceptable as boasting that you didn't know how to read. Somehow, not knowing how to read was extremely socially unacceptable but being "bad" at math was perfectly fine.

Similarly, in today's time, people are boasting that they "never really got computers," and seem to be proud of this fact. To Mr. Fisch, this was equivalent to not knowing how to read some years back. Given that technology is ever present in daily life and is quickly becoming the basis of all interpersonal communication, not knowing how to use it is the same as not being able to communicate due to illiteracy. Mr. Fisch goes so far as to claim "If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write. " He recognizes that this might be an extreme statement, but I really don't think he is that far off the mark. Technology is so prevalent in society today and is in most cases so easily accessible that there is truly no excuse not to have a knowledge of how to avail oneself of the most basic functions at minimum.

Gary Hayes' Social Media Count

The number of interactions each second using various social media is astounding. I knew there was a dramatic change in interpersonal communications over the past few decades, but to put the data out there in real time is almost unreal. The impact this has on every field is substantial, education included.

I started college in the Fall of 2006. I went for a few semesters and then decided I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to major in so I took some time off. The changes that have occurred at the higher education level in just three years were incredible. With almost incessant developments in the field of technology, the way we approach all aspects of education is changed forever. Between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Skype, Google, Flickr, (and the list goes on... and on... and on...), knowledge is literally at our fingertips. Just in EDM310, the Student Aggregator on Facebook allows all of us to be connected with someone who can answer our questions on assignments almost instantaneously. If we truly harness all the technological resources at our disposal, education can only become more unceasing. We will always be able to learn something new, regardless of the time of day, our location, or anything else.

A Vision of Students Today

I felt like this provided a very accurate depiction of the average college student today. When my parents were in college, their parents paid for it. It was not necessary for them to take out student loans or get part time jobs to pay for their education. They had considerably more time to spend studying, working on projects, writing papers and so on than the average college student does today. It sometimes feels impossible to get everything accomplished all at once and so you make a decision on what takes priority, completing that task and seeing what time is left. One of the points made in the video was "I buy hundred dollar text books and never open them. My neighbor paid for this class but never comes." So many of us learn not by sitting and being talked at, but by engaging in different activities and learning from our experiences.

Books, newsprint, magazines, etc. are all becoming antiquated things of the past. They are bulky and heavy to carry around and can be streamlined when replaced with iPads, Kindles, and other devices. The challenge for teachers, professors, and university personnel is to create a dynamic classroom experience that is never static. Our attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter due to the availability of constant entertainment. We need a classroom environment that is constantly changing and keeping our interest peaked. A typical lecture based class just doesn't cut it anymore.