EDM310 blog post #2

By the group Miro: Sally Gajewski, Brian Orr, and Laura Hamilton What will Teaching in the 21st Century be like? Mr. Dancealot video actually turned out to be very comical! It shows a teacher teaching a dance class in an auditorium like classroom, on how to do certain dances. You can tell this video is trying to point out that some things can not just be taught with paper and pencil. You have to actually “do” the subject that is being taught. He asks the students to remain quiet and not talk to one another or even ask questions. The only method of teaching he has is a very poor power point. He then goes on to show examples to the students by standing up and doing dance steps with his feet. The teacher is behind a desk while showing these examples and you can only see him from the waste up. As the students squirm to stand and move around to see his feet and dance steps that their supposed to be taking notes on, he ask them to remain seated and quite. The next scene is the final exam, which is being held in a gym with nothing but a radio and video camera. The teacher walks in turns the camera and music on and then tells the students that he will watch the video at a later date to grade and proceeds to leave. As the students look around dumb founded, the teacher yells dance, dance! This video is another example on how not to teach, especially certain subjects including dance. Not everything can be taught with a paper, pencil and book. And some subjects cannot be taught just using a power point. In the 21st century teaching using technology will have to be used if we want our students to excel.

By Sally Gajewski Networked Students In networked students by Wendy Drexler it shows a great way to learn to use the computer/internet. In this type of class a teacher is not always needed. She is only needed to answer questions and teach you something that you can’t learn on the internet. In this class you get to learn how to build a resource webpage (RRS page). The other students are there to teach you as much as the teacher if not more. What if a student doesn’t understand the computer/internet? Then what happens? Does the Teach step up and help the student or does the other students step in? It’s actually the other students that step in and help the student with understanding the computer/internet. The teacher just hopes everyone is understanding everything. Which means that you don’t have to have a certified teacher. All you really need is someone who knows how the computer/internet works. So for most students this is a great way to learn the computer/internet. But, for the select few it could be a real struggle. As in someone like me that just don’t quite get the computer/internet.

By Brian Orr Teaching in the 21st Century The second presentation I was to watch is entitled “Teaching in the 21st Century,” which was created by Kevin Roberts and made into a video by Professor Strange. The overall theme of the video was how educators will adapt their teaching styles, classrooms, and entire school systems to collaborate with the 21st century’s myriad of technology. Each new innovation may add to a teacher’s classroom discussion or lesson presentation. The race to discover these new technologies and implement them well in our classrooms is vitally important, Roberts thinks. He continuously brings up creativity being emphasized in future classrooms, along with student discussion and information gathering by oneself. Students have so many tools at their disposal currently, and only more to come! They can find and gather information, and yet teachers “need to be the filters” of each class, to guide students to understand what information is correct. Roberts states many ideas he believes all teachers should act upon, yet a few points he made grabbed me the most. Engaging students in each lesson and training every person to be a mature professional. The students should be willing and able to contribute to each lesson. They will have tools such as Smartboards, iPads, and the Internet, to add their ideas to a teacher’s lessons. The last theme of becoming a professional was extremely important! I was very inspired that Roberts mentioned that responsibility, that teachers can be parental figures in a classroom. They can help their students to grow individually, especially by being a model for adult mentalities. Overall, I was very inspired by Roberts ideas of evolving our classrooms into a 21st century entity.

By Laura Hamilton In Harness Your Students Digital Smarts video, a teacher named Vicki Davis gives us a prime example on using technology in the classroom. She is a high school teacher who uses wikis, blogs, podcasts, virtual world, and other new media tools to connect her students of rural Georgia to the world. Without technology these students would more than likely know nothing else other than rural Georgia. She believes children using technology for learning purposes will only help increase knowledge in the schools today. Vicki also wants students to teach themselves as well as the teacher. Students should not only ask questions and be thinkers, but they should use technology to answer their own personal questions. Students should feel responsible for researching the answer to their questions and learning how to use programs to better their education. Empowering students to learn and share together is something to think about while watching this video.