Week 2

Response to Michael Wesch: A Vision of Students Today

Michael Wesch’s video “A Vision of Students Today” is honestly quite interesting. I believe Professor Wesch’s point is that teaching must be interesting. Students of our generation are easily bored stiff and ironically, easily amused. It is hard for most students to pay attention to a monotone professor of a topic they could care less about. Unfortunately, many college students are required to take classes that do not seem to pertain to their major, so they will find anything to do to pass the time. Computers are becoming more and more common in the classroom and in fact are proving to be both beneficial and a nuisance. Computers allow students to be more hands-on yet at the same time, they seem to give a student too much freedom in class. As the video showed, some students who bring their laptops to class are playing on a social network rather than doing any assignments that pertain to the class in which they are engaged.

Depending on one’s attention span, computers in a classroom can be either beneficial or detrimental to one’s education. I am a huge fan of the good old-fashioned chalkboard approach. A chalkboard makes the educator move, which keeps the students’ attention from settling on the desk in front of them. I know technology is an important part of our society today, and the size of its importance is growing rapidly every day. I am just not completely convinced that every classroom needs new technology every day. Believe it or not, some students get bored with using computers in every classroom. I am one of those students. I would rather have paper and pencil any day over watching a movie in class or going back and forth between a professor and a computer. Everyone learns differently, and it is our job as teachers to incorporate different learning strategies into our lessons for our different learners.

Response to "It's Not About the Technology" by Kelly Hines

I completely one hundred percent agree with Kelly! I thought I was one of the few people who still believe teaching can be done the “old-fashioned way.” Teaching lies in the hands of the teacher alone—no matter how much technology is readily available. A teacher must be willing to try their hardest to explain the information to his or her students. I love Kelly’s analogy involving physics and teaching saying that if your students are not learning, you are not teaching. It absolutely amazes me how bad everyone relies on technology alone to be a teacher. It is hard to rely on technology alone whenever most people who are still in school today have incorporated technology in their schooling over a course of years. People of younger generations have the advantage that they started kindergarten with the use of technology.

As future educators, we should be more concerned with different techniques rather than different technologies. Techniques allow us to show our creativity and make our students use their imaginations. Technology incorporates imagination as well; however, I am not convinced it uses a child’s imagination to its fullest. An important thing to remember is everyone learns differently, and whatever technique works for one student may not work for another. This is why a teacher should know the material well enough to explain it in many different ways if needed. Overall, being a great teacher comes from imagination—not technology.

Response to “Is It Okay to Be a Technology Illiterate Teacher?” By Karl Fisch

First, Karl made some very good points in his blog. The main point: it is not “cool” to be technologically illiterate. Technology is becoming a huge part of society at a pace that is more rapid than ever before. Instead of people running and hiding from technology, we should be embracing it to see what it has to offer. Teachers should use technology if they believe it will be effective in their classroom. If a teacher does not believe in the technology themselves, how on earth can they expect their students to believe in it? This is why it is important for educators to “love to learn” as Dr. Strange says. And as Karl says, we should stop “jeopardizing the chances of our youngsters.”

Second, we need to wake up and realize we are in the twenty-first century. As Karl says, it is just as crucial to be technology literate as it is to be literate. If educators do not teach students to use technology in an effective way, who will? This means if we have the capabilities to use technology in an effective way in our classrooms, we should by all means do it. We should help the students make connections in new ways because by showing students different ways of putting information together, we are building bridges in their minds and preparing them to think differently. As a future math educator, I know on average, there usually exists about three ways to solve any type of problem and various ways to show a student how to do this—imagine the possible ways with technology at our fingertips! Once again, I will say it—we need to wake up and realize what century we are in and what tools are at our fingertips for the taking.

Response to “Social Media Count” by Gary Hayes

Wow, I love statistics. They always put data in such a different light and make it interesting to learn about different topics. Gary’s media count shows us that every second our world is becoming more and more technology literate. I thoroughly believe every school should have numerous computer classes readily available to students, and I believe high schools should make their graduates have a certain amount of computer classes passed before graduation. Social networks are growing and growing every day, and it almost leads us to believe that before long only a very minute amount of the population will not be logged into at least one social network. These networks are a super convenient way to keep in touch with classmates, family members, co-workers, and friends. It is almost unimaginable to even think about how many pictures and videos are uploaded to these networks every day!

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seem to be at the heart of Gary’s media count because these are probably the most used applications on the web. It is honestly hard to believe that just a few years ago, most people had dial-up internet where these applications were almost unusable. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube would have ran extremely slow on dial-up; we should know because they still have glitches due to an overload on their servers. It is hard to imagine what these statistics will look like for the next generation and what will be popular with them. Because of all these advances in technology, it is a necessity that educators jump on board and use these applications at home and if possible, in our classrooms. Technology is such a useful and powerful tool; we just need to figure out how to best use it.