Blog Assignment 4

Don’t teach your kids this stuff. Please? By: Scott McLeod
Dr. Scott McLeod is an Associate Professor at Iowa State University in the Educational Administration program. Also, he is the Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). He is also recognized as one of the leading academic experts in the nation on K-12 school technology leadership issues. In his blog post, he makes good arguments about how students are learning to read and write differently than how it was taught before there were more advances in technology. What he says about pen and paper is true; it’s not going anywhere. He assumes a lot about what the kids will do, but he does not provide any valid sources of if this occurs with the majority of kids. It also seems as if he is completely against any form of technology from the way he speaks about the different formats of it. Another thing is that he says to not let the parents and educators teach them all of the different things on the internet, but he is going against what he said by allowing his kids to do this themselves.

The iSchool Initiative
At the beginning of the video, the student starts off by introducing the problem of budget cuts at his high school, and then says that he has a solution to the problem. He argues that the iSchool program, which will be held on the iTouch platform, is a better option to sitting in a classroom and having teachers. He gives different examples of applications on the iTouch that could be used such as Chemical Touch, World Wiki, Star Walk, Classics and Formulae. He argues that these different applications could easily replace texts in school and save natural resources.
He provides mainly positives that help his argument of the iSchool being a better alternative. He appeals to the going green movement and encourages people that this will be much better overall. My main reactions to this are that he has obviously done his research. To know about what the entire program would ensue, and the possibilities of making it easier can easily appeal to a general audience. Overall, I believe that this sounds like a great program, but it all seems too impersonal. There would barely be any interaction to a teacher, and in some cases it is better to have a teacher to explain specific situations.


The Lost Generation
I was surprised when I first saw this video. It brought about a good point. There are many people that doubt what will happen in the current era will stay true in the next. The way that this video was set up, was to show that even if you say something, it you go back and say what you meant backwards, it has a different and possibly more promising future than what it was forward. Basically, you want to think of what things will be said in the future about the past, then about what is said in the past about the future.


Jennifer Chambers and Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir
My first reaction to the video was “Wow.” I really could not believe that none of the people in the virtual choir had ever met before. Their voices just blended so well together, that I thought they had to at least know each other before hand. It’s just astonishing that you can take people that have never met, put them together, and make such a beautiful song. This is an amazing way to get people to interact with others that share the same interest as them somewhere else in the world.

Teaching in the 21st Century
I feel that some of the arguments that are made in the video show how the roles of teachers have changed from givers of information to something different. According to the video, they are merely “filters” for information. I do not believe that is necessarily true. With the way that technology is advancing so fast, there will always be something new that the students will not know what to do with it. In the way that I see it, there will always be something for a teacher to inform their students about. Another thing is that students don’t know everything. They will need teachers to inform them of what they do not know about which they will need later on in life. What it means to teach in the 21st Century is to provide information and skills to our students that they will carry with them throughout their life.