Additional Assignment #1

I found google squared to be a really useful search engine for education. With google squared you can do quite a lot of research that can be used to enhance your teaching in the classroom. It is a new search engine to me but I would recommend it to others for thier benefit.

I also found wolfram alpha to be a very helpful search engine that could be very useful in the classroom. It had many interesting facts and graphs right at your finger tips with no effort from you. It was also another search engine that I had never heard of but that I would again recommend to others for their benefit.

My thoughts on the "Did You Know 3.0" video did not change. If anything changed at all it would be that I would always research the statistics I read more in depth before sharing them with others.



I also found that "Foos for Thought" was extremely interesting. It is amazing to me that you can take someone completely illiterate and they can do as much as figure out how to use an ipad. I appreciate technology even more after reading this.

Blog Post 3

A Vision of Students Today

I am the kind of person who does not know a lot about technology, nor did I really care to know, but after watching the videos required for this class I have come to realize how much I unintentionally use technology. It is very true that sometimes I go to class and I just get on facebook on my phone because, whatever the teacher is talking about is whole lot less interesting than the cyber world. I also spend many hours more online than I do studying or doing homework.

Another way that I can relate to this video is in the aspect of books. Every single year that a new semester begins, it never fails, I will buy a book that I pay over one hundred dollars for and the teacher will never require us to use it even one time. Also, by the time the semester is over, you go to try and return the book that you never used and it is out of date and now considered an old edition. In regardes to the web, it will never become an old edition and will never cost you money. The web is updated regularly. In conclusion, I could say that it did capture my college experiance.

It's Not About the Technology

I thoroughly enjoyed myself as I read Ms. Hines' post. It really reminds you, if you are an education major, what you signed up for in the first place, and that is first and foremost to teach. Not only as Ms. Hines said do we teach, but we are also here to learn. Without a passion to teach, and make sure your students grasp what your teaching, you are not going to succeed in education.

My absolute favorite part of this post was when Ms. Hines said, "I equate teaching and learning to a basic physics principle. If an abject does not move,no matter how much effort has been applied, no work has been done. Therefore, if a student has not learned, no matter how much effort has been exerted, no teaching has been done." This quote is one that will stick with me the rest of my teaching career. This blog really gave me incite on teaching and what it is really about. First, a teacher teaches. Second, a teacher adds technology when appropriate.

Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher

I really enjoyed this post as well. I think even in his frustration he got the point across. I think that anyone who says that technology is not important and that you do not need it in schools should definitely read this blog. I definitely do not think that technology is all there is to an education at all. First you are a teacher, then you can bring in the technology to enhance the learning experience.

School in this day and time is not a place in my opinion, like I've said before, to hide from technology. Even if you aren't using technology inside the classroom you will still need it for keeping in contact with your co-workers and for keeping a record of the grades. There is no way that a completely technological illiterate person could servive in a school system today.

Garys Social Media Count

First, I would like to say that if it takes having one of all of these things listed on the count to be technologiacally literate, then I am not! I did not even know what some of the things were on there. The thing that was even more strange to me was the fact that even though I didn't know what some of the things were on there, they were growing so fast. This makes me think that I should step it up a notch in the cyber world. This was very eye opening for me.

Summary of David Warlick's "2 cents worth"

I found that the first blog post I read, "Dang! I just Missed It", to be very eye opening. As David Warlick went on about Mars and how it could be seen on August 26th as the size of the moon I was actually starting to believe that this could have actually happened. I began to think that I had missed this event as well. After he explained that this was not true, I realized just how many statistics out there could be false and that some teachers do not always do their research. When you do not do your research, you are taking the risk of sharing with your students false information that they in return may also pass on. If David would not have written that this information were false I would have begun to ask people if they had seen this event and I would have been taken for a fool. Be sure to research your facts before sharing them.

I also read his second blog post called "Willing eBook Sellers". This post more irritated me than anything else. I was just so completely baffeled that Sony and Apple would not let Cory Doctorow, who is an author, publish his ebooks with them. They would not let him do so because he did not want to put any license agreements on his books for the buyer. Doctorow's publisher also said that this was ok with him. Still Sony and Apple rejected this idea. Other companys such as Barnes and Noble were perfectly okay with this arrangement. I wonder if Doctorow did this intentionally to prove a point about these big name companies and that they want control over everything. Please comment back with your opinion.

Google Presentation

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WoRdLe

Wordle 1

My First Wordle!

Post 2

"Did You Know 3.0"

I found this "Did You Know 3.0", to be VERY interesting. In a way the video was almost kind of scary in my opinion. It is hard to grasp the fact that in 2049 there could possibly be a computer that is smarter than the whole human species. I'm not quite sure I'm ready for a computer of that intelligence to be created. 2049 is a long way away and I'm sure by then it will be more acceptable but in 2010 I'm not sure many people would be very fond of a computer that could potentially take over the world.

Another thing that I found interesting, was how long text messaging had been around. I am 20 almost 21 years old, so therefore, I was born in 1989. Text messaging came about in 1992 so it seems as though texting has been around my whole life. After reading that texting had only been around 18 years I was shocked on how much technology had advanced since then. Technology is an amazing thing and I am very thankful for the access we get to things unreachable without it.

"Mr.Winkle Wakes"

This video was not as interesting as "Did You Know," yet it got the same point across. It is definitely true that if you were asleep for 100 years that you would wake up to a world that you would not recognize due to all the technological advances that take place. As you could see in the video Mr. Winkle did not like technology but that was only because he had not been introduced to it. I think that once a person can grasp technology and the perks that come along with it that, they would fully enjoy it.

There was one aspect of this video that I disagreed with. I disagree that schools are a safe environment for the technically challenged people in today's generation. For the most part, all schools are getting more and more advanced with technology. For example, I know that many schools now have smart boards. Eventually, I really believe that school will be taught from the comfort of your home.

"The Importance of Creativity"

I found this video extremely funny! I thought that his way of explaining his theory of creativity was very clever. I totally agree with Ken when he stated that "creativity is educated out of them" (them being the children). We teach children in schools today that if they are wrong with their answer then there is no other option.This means that if they are trying to be unique then we tell them that they can't.

I believe that we should come up with a different way of testing our children in a way that they can also give their opinion or input. We also need to incorporate the arts in with educating these children. We as teachers need to let them feel that letting their creativity flow is a good thing. Doing so would help create many talented adults in the future.

"Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts"

I found this video very inspiring. I am not very technologically advanced and watching this video gives me a little more hope. In this video the teacher said that you do not have to basically know what your doing with the computers to be able to teach it. The fact that she won the best blog in the world and made that statement makes me feel more confident to enter the teaching field in this day and time where everything is computer and Internet based.

I also loved how this teacher got her students involved in everything and let them even teach her a few things about what project they were working on just to prove that it could be done. I believe classrooms like the one from this video will be the classrooms of our future. There will be computers in every classroom for every student and cellphones used in the correct manor will be encouraged not discouraged. I'm excited to engage in these activities.