Blog Post #2

Did You Know? 3.0 - A John Strange 2012 Version

As a future educator it will be a imperative to stay connected with the fast paced world of technology. I think about change and it can be a bit scary at times, but I will have to compare the necessity of change with my former occupation of retail. As a manager at my former employer, "Big Box Retail", if you did not embrace and promote the changes being made in the operation and flow of the company, you didn't have a job. It will be the same with education. If a teacher is set in their ways and refuses to change then I expect that a position will become available. This will happen because of the inability to properly fulfill curriculum standards that are forevermore changing.
This video really makes me think about the way people learn, and how education is totally different than it was just fifteen years ago when I was a junior college student. Online resources, paperless assignments, and the speed of communication has totally changed the relationship between teacher and the student/parents. The internet and digital media capabilities have changed our society from an industrial occupation environment to a post-industrial extreme technology environment. My mother is sixty-eight years old and she never imagined the changes that would be made in society just like I cannot imagine what technology will be like when my two year old is my age (34).
Whether or not people agree with the way the future of society is going to be, it goes back to Spencer and Darwin's "Survival of the Fittest" mentality. Right now people that decided not to embrace technology find themselves in occupations that require excessive manual labor or at worst, unemployed due to lack of skills and knowledge. Embrace Change, is my best advice.

Mr. Winkle Wakes

Matthew Needleman described the classroom as unchanged in his video, but the video was uploaded in 2008. I have to say that I am sure there are still classrooms in education that are still unchanged today but as a whole I feel that most Board of Educations across America are starting to change. The reason is a new generation of administrators are taking the reigns of the metaphorical "horse and buggy". Those new administrators know that they are losing the attention of the students. As I mentioned in a former post that I want to keep the students engaged by fostering the technology that they love and "can't live without". Kids will always dislike homework, but if they have to physically write assignments and turn in the following day rather than type them and upload them to an online database, the chance of keeping them engaged will be far yonder more challenging.
In 1990 the student dropout rate was an estimated 12.1% and in 2010 it was 7.4% as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics. USA Today reported that a main contributor to the decline was the economy. What drives today's economy, technology. A technology driven society creates a desire to have the latest smartphone, the newest gaming system, or the technologically advanced automobiles. Without a high school diploma or equivalent a person makes 41% less per year than someone with a diploma. To attain those desires, legally, people must have those credentials to afford such items. Our world's technology is moving at warp speed and educators must keep up to supply the need for technocation.

Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity

Sir Ken Robinson mentioned three themes: evidence of human creativity, no idea about the future, and the capacity for innovation that children have. With classrooms as Matthew Needleman described, it will be impossible for children to be prepared for the future. Robinson mentioned that the public school systems stigmatize mistakes. If children are not able to apply their creativity to their education they will be as he stated "Educated out of creativity". The technology of today was the creativeness of someone's dream or imagination. Robinson talked about how schools were created to meet the need of industrialism. As I alluded to earlier, further up in this post, we are in a post-industrial society where technology drives everything. How will our children keep up without this knowledge.
As educators we need to feed the creativity of our students and embrace their ideas. Not to gain any brownie points but I admire the updates to EDM310 that are ideas from the students. Embracing those ideas furthers the possibility of education and it breaks the mold on old school ways of teaching. Learning from each other and sharing information increases the likelihood of exponential learning.
I enjoy cooking, and I have been taught how to cook from many different mediums. My mother and grandmother taught me how to cook many things. Television, books, magazines and the internet have taught me even more, but I have taught myself the most about cooking through experimentation. I have had a few horrible dishes come out of that creativeness, but there have been some really great tasting meals come to the table by adding my own spin on classic recipes. As a parent I know I have quenched that creativeness in my children at times, but I am trying to provide a playground for discovery. As an educator I must provide the appropriate environment for my students to learn.

Pinterest: Using Available Resources

This was my first visit and exploration of Pinterest. I never imagined that Pinterest would be a source of education ideas and technology. I really like the idea of students using Pinterest as a way to collaborate on group assignments. This innovative idea dissolves the barriers that would prevent students from contributing to a group project without the need of a physical meeting place. This doesn't substitute going to the library to research but only makes it much more possible for full group collaboration. Most students have parents that are both working and they end up not having a way to meet with classmates to do research or assemble the project. With the digital age of Power Point, podcast or video presentations, students can accomplish these assignments from home via the web.
I found Samia Wahab to be a viable sourch to new ideas and news of education. One article pinned by Wahab was about online education. As a parent I am taking advantage of the convenience of online classes to fit my personal life. Also I like Edudemic's site as well. They had an article that discussed using Facebook as a teaching resource. In my blog post #1 "Future Classroom" section I mentioned using technology to present learning in a new way to engaged the students. Over all Pinterest appears to be limitless with possibility.