Jan. 31 blog posts

Here's whats coming!

This video makes me think of my own almost two year old. From the time I got my iPhone which was about 6 moths ago she instantly figured out how to slide it and make it come on and how to go to the pictures and find pictures of herself. She even knows how to play videos and games. My son who is five is probably as technologically advanced as it gets. He can operate the computer better than any kid his age I know, he can download apps on my phone and play his DSi all by himself.

I think that children these days learn at such a young age about technology that not using it to teach is a waste! It just doesn't make any sense to me to have the all the resources that we have available to us and not use them or not want to use them.

MEDIA LITERACY! and LITTLE KIDS... BIG POTENTIAL!

This is what I think a classroom in 2010 should look like. Teachers using every available source of technology to teach the kids and kids actually using all the technology instead of a teacher just standing in front of a board, writing and expecting the kids to actually pay attention to whats going on.

These First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class are using blogs, wikis, web pages, and Skype to collaborate and learn while other teachers are still using JUST books and the dry erase board. Now I don't even have to tell you which set of kids is going get more out of their first grade year do I? It just seems unfair that classrooms around the world are so different. I think all teachers should have to use media and technology in their classrooms.

These kids are not just learning about technology but I think they are also learning about internet safety and courtesy. The part where the little boy said you should never say anything mean on a blog because you may hurt someone's feelings really meant that these kids were learning how to treat others online. These kids also had laptops and desktops and looked as if there were plenty of computers for the kids in class. That is so great because computers shouldn't just be used as a gaming station they should be used by all the kids for REAL learning!

I thought it was great how these kids were writing on their blogs and saying that they wanted to learn to write better so that their writing would be better on their blogs. Nowadays it is so hard to motivate kids to learn things and to work hard at something and these kids really sounded like they wanted to get better so their blogs would be better!! WOW! What an inspiration!!!

PODCASTS!

I watched the podcast on the smart board lessons first and I liked it because it was very informal and very real, but for the same reason it was kind of hard to follow because he was ordering coffee and talking to people during the show. Some of the stuff that he said like about DimDim being free he forgot to mention that it was only a trial period. For the most part though I thought that it was informative and would be very helpful for the classroom. I can't figure out though if he was on his cell phone making a podcast on he had his computer in the car with him.

Next I listened to this week in photography. This podcast was very different from the last one from the beginning. It started off my saying all the sponsors and it sounded very professional. There are multiple people on this one, there are guests and regular people on there. This one kind of reminded me of a radio station because it sounded like they were advertising things and talking about current topics rather than just giving information. Where i did think that the first was too informal this one was too much like a radio for me.

The next one I listened to was mac break weekly. It also started out with a professional voice doing advertisements. They were live at the iPad reveal. They were actually live and talking to a studio. They were using skype and twitter. This was more like the news and reporters i thought. By the way I watched this and WANT a iPad LOL! (just thought id throw that in)

Ed TechTalk sounded to me like a at home podcast. It wasn't as professional as the photography one. What I did find interesting about this podcast is that the lady being interviewed was teaching a hybrid class using lots of technology. She had a paperless classroom and an online blackboard which I thought was very neat!

David Warlick reminded me a lot of the smart board lessons because he was in a restaurant which crying children and dishes clinging in the background. It was VERY hard for me to listen to this and focus on what they were saying because of all the background noise. They did talk about bringing people in by skype which I LOVE!

The last one I listened to was KidCast. The KidCast one I listened to was where he was talking about whether to do a podcast or video. I found this podcast VERY helpful. He was very easy to listen to because there was no background noise and was very detailed when he was explaining something.

Amy Stork