Blog Post #5

Don't teach your kids this stuff

Dr. McLeod is a an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky. He is also founding director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education. In Dr. Mcleod's post he is trying to warn parents and teachers that there are dangerous things that can occur through technology and that they shouldn't teach kids anything about it. I agree that there are some disadvantages of technology that can be bring about danger but I also think that there are advantages as well. Yes, you have predators online chatting with people through fake identities, scams, and etc but at the same time you also have the advantages. Through technology you can do so much and obtain a lot of information. I think that a child should have it explained to them the advantages and disadvantages from someone who knows it. They should know to not talk to strangers or give out personal information.

Ischool Initiative

Ischool Initiative was a great video made by a high school student named Travis Allen. In this video he talks about how we should convert everything in school to ischool. He explains how much money is spent on all of the supplies and tools needed in school for things like pens, pencil, graphing and scientific calculators,textbooks, notebooks, and etc. His estimate that he came up with was minimum $600. The price of the ischool is $150 average and it contains all of the supplies in that one item. He also brought up the point that this will save on our natural resources. This all makes a lot of sense even though many people may not like the idea of no books and they want there children to actually write and read in real books. Some kids learn better when they actually have books and is writing with a pen or pencil on paper. Travis Allen's idea of ischool is a great way to save on money and natural resources but personally I don't think that kids should learn only through technology.

Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir
This video was amazing! I have never heard of a choir being created online and performing from home. These choir members never met and it sounds really good together. It is amazing what you can do through technology.

Teaching in the 21st century

This was a very interesting video by Kevin Roberts. Roberts believes that teaching in the 21st century is not just transferring information and facts into the students head but rather to be the filter. What he means by this is that all of the resources are here for the students so teachers should be teaching them how to use there resources so they can actually think and learn on there own. This is helping them to prepare them for the real world because in life it is the same way. It's not all about taking information in memorizing it to spit it out for a test then forget it later.