Blog Assignment 8

Richard Miller: This is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2
This video shows that people advancing to a point where books are rarely needed to be printed. In regards to the book, As if Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education, Richard E. Miller says, “It has now gone the fate of virtually all academic books. It’s out of print, and you can get it on amazon for 59 cents.” It is amazing to how much information you can find online. Most research can now be done without having to set foot in a library.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I am fully prepared to write with multimedia. I believe with enough time, I will be ready. There is also the fact that multimedia changes, and as soon as you learn one another is created. Teachers will always be learning how to write with multimedia. There is no one person who is not learning new things every day. I hope that as time goes by, I will become more capable of writing with different types of multimedia so as to convey my findings to others.

I believe that my students will be able to do this if given the chance. They would be more than capable of learning the various ways to write with multimedia. They can create videos to tell about history, or work on other projects such as audio clips. As a future teacher, I believe that they will be able to learn more if they are able to write with multimedia. Writing with multimedia allows the students to take time to learn about the different topics that are being covered through sound and visual aids.

The Chipper Series and EDM310 for Dummies

I believe that the messages that are being expressed in these videos are that just because something seems hard, you should not give up. In the Chipper Series, Chipper gave up on college because Dr. Strange’s class was “not working”. In the end, she got a degree, got fired from different jobs, and then decided to go back to school for her masters. This shows that she might have made a bad decision by dropping out. In EDM310 for Dummies, this video shows that as long as you know the main programs that are being used, it can be fun and enjoyable class experience. The characters had given up at the beginning because they felt confused about what they needed to do, but they had not really tried to learn.

Some projects that I would like to do myself are something along the lines of testimonials. I think it would be a good idea to create a video that compared the experiences of the students in EDM310. I would like to show people that that have had bad experiences versus people that are greatly benefiting from the course.


Learn to Change, Change to Learn

I feel that most of these arguments are accurate. Most learning is done outside the classroom through communication. The means of communication outside school is what most kids participate in. School is becoming more of just a place that partially helps with the building of classroom communities. It is better to prepare students for college and life by helping them have a greater academic experience.


The Secret Powers of Time by Philip Zambardo and Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by David Pink

In “The Secret Powers of Time”, Philip Zambardo tells that there are six main time zones. There are two main views of the past, present, and future. It mainly talks about being future oriented. He later tells of the Pace of Life, which is an idea by Robert Levine. This tells of the sense of time duration in ordinary life occurrences. Cities and countries are now able to be told by the pace of life. Boys are more likely to drop out of high school than girls. This is apparently because in a study it was found that by the time boys are 21, they have spent 10,000 hours playing video games alone. This is shocking to me. I have friends that play video games, but I could not see how anyone can play that many hours of games. This also talks about family values and how they have changed. About twenty years ago, there was a study which had results of 60% of families had sit down dinners. They redid the study and the results were that 20% of families had sit down dinners. Zambardo brings a good point that there cannot be family values if they do not have sit down dinners. It is better for people to realize their time perspective and others perspectives as well.

In “Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us”, Dan Pink tells about different types of motivation through incentives. He tells that people found out that as long as the task only incorporated mechanical skill, the bonuses worked as was to be expected. This was not the same when it came to cognitive skill. Apparently, once you get above rudimentary skills, the performance declines. They replicated this in India and found that the higher the incentives, the performance decreases significantly. In the video it says, “One day of autonomy produces things that never emerge.” This was told as an example that is opposite of incentives.

In my opinion, what is described in the videos is very important in the great scheme of things. Education is changing rapidly and it is being left behind. As it was said in “The Secret Powers of Time,” kids are seeing school as something boring and not wanting to be there. The education is becoming lost to the digital advances. People’s drive for success is incredible. Some people are over achievers and want to work hard to become the best that they can. In the middle of that, they sometimes slack off and have poor performance. Dan Pink tells about how in a study it has been shown that when someone is asked to perform a task above rudimentary skills, the performance just plummets. This has an effect, because it can cause work in a company to be slowed down, and cause problems.