Blog Post 4

1. This post, Don't Teach Your Kid This Stuff. Please?, by Scott McLeod was funny to me. I love sarcasm. I immediately picked up on it. He goes on and on about the uses of technology and how we should keep “our” children from using it. He states that we shouldn’t teach them to read or write online. He tries to portray all of this as evil that our kids won’t be safe.
At the end of his poetic rant, he states that he’s letting his kids do all of these things. He then poses the question of who will have a leg up in a decade. It’s obvious that if we hinder our children, his children will surely have a leg up. This was quite obvious to me. I enjoyed it.
Who is Scott McLeod? He is an Associate Professor in the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University. He also is the Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the nation’s only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators. He has received numerous national awards for his technology leadership work, including recognitions from the cable industry, Phi Delta Kappa, and the National School Boards Association. So I would say that he is an advocate for the use of technology.


2. The points being made by Travis in his video, The iSchool Initiative, are some that should be considered. I like the idea of an iSchool. I can see the benefits in this. Travis suggests that this will save our school systems about $600 per student. That is a lot of money. He argues that it will save some of our natural resources, and I agree.
I’m assuming that the school system will provide the students with this tool. In doing that, they are setting themselves up for future costs. Students will inevitably lose this device or damage it. Therein lies another problem. Who will then pay for the damages? These devices will be a lot more expensive to replace.
All in all, I think this is a great idea, but it can never replace a human being. It should only be used as a tool and not a replacement.

3. This video, You Can't Be My Teacher, couldn’t have put it any simpler. I love the look that this kid gives us. He is absolutely correct. We will be teaching digital natives. We need to be equipped to teach these children. He said that it is our job to prepare them for the world that they are living in.
If we want our students to be successful, then we need to be willing to continue to learn ourselves so that we can bring this to them. Using Facebook and Twitter are great avenues for us to stay up to par with ever-changing technology. If I am to be his teacher, then I cannot depend on a textbook alone.


4. Wow! I couldn’t believe my eyes or my ears. This video, Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir, is incredible! To be able to collaborate all of these people and to create one choir just amazes me. I thoroughly enjoyed this. This is only a glimpse of what technology can do. This is a beautiful use of technology.
I’m speechless, really. This collaboration shows the artistic uses of technology as well. It takes an artist to be able to put something like this together. To see people all over the world willing to come together for one goal is inspiring.


5. The positions expressed in this presentation, Teaching in the 21st Century, allowed me to think of how I will use these tools in my classroom. To think that only using a textbook and not showing students how to use the innovative tools that are available to them would be an injustice to them. As he stated, if we are not current with technology, then our way of teaching is obsolete. I love that he stated that we are no longer the main source for knowledge, but that we are the filter.
In order for us to show students how to use these tools, we must be able to use them ourselves. Students have access to information about anything, anytime, and anywhere. It is our job to be able to show them the easiest way to search for things that they are curious about. In doing this, I think that we would be much better teachers in allowing our students more avenues to research. By doing this, we would engage our students in the topic and also allow them to be more involved in the teaching process. We all know that we have so much that we can learn from each other.