Blog Assignment #4

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?
I enjoyed Dr. McLeod's post, I agree with him that it really is not a very good idea to shelter your children from technology. But my argument is why even try to shelter your children from all thats out there? Not only does it leave them at disadvantage when other children are more technologically literate than they are, but it is a bad idea to shelter children from anything. When you tell your child that he or she can not do something that one of their friends is able to do, then it just makes the child want to do it even more. But why try to shelter them from something so easy to trace? Technology today makes it so easy for parents to know exactly what their child is doing. If you have the right tools you can see every text, every phone call and every webpage visited on your child's phone. You can also monitor their whole computer. You can see everything that they are doing on their computer on your computer screen. I know that children do not like to be monitored, but I am pretty positive than a child would rather have a cell phone and computer that is monitored than not have one at all. Also, computers at schools are so closely monitored and have so many sites blocked that there really is nothing to worry about when children are granted access to technology at school.
Scott McLeod is a Professor at Iowa State University and also helped to create the video we viewed earlier in the semester, Did You Know 3.0.

The iSchool Initiative
The idea that he presented in this video is very interesting. I like all of the apps presented that would diminish the need of calculators, text books and other costly school supplies. Going from an average cost of $600 per student to only around $150 per student could save the schools a hugh amount of money that they could use for other things. Also, having all of the tools you need on one device would cut out the problem of students forgetting calculators, books or pencils when it comes time to work. I always forgot my calculator on test day, and then I was left with the classroom calculators that did not have all of the functions that I needed to complete a problem. Not being able to separate one tool from the rest of your school supplies would make it much more difficult to forget things at home or in the locker. Being able to connect the students, parents and teachers all on one system would be great also. However, I do think that if this system was ever initiated that it would take many years to get it working properly. It would probably take even longer to gain the approval of the parents and teachers having to use the new system. I do think that the students would really like this system. No bookbag to carry around, and they can take all the tools they need for school wherever they want with no hassle.

The Lost Generation
This video was interesting.I would hate to think that our society was headed down the road that was first described. The second path is much more desirable. I hope children today realize that they are not the lost generation described but that they are a generation that can change things. I thought that it was a good technique to talk about reversing the way people think, and at the same time reverse the text to go backwards on the presentation.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir
This post was great! It is hard to believe that so many people who have never met could make something sound so good. It did not sound like a bunch of people on a webcam, it sounded exactly like a professional choir performing.

Teaching In The 21st CenturyThis video shows that students can get access to anything, at anytime. As future teachers our job is going to be to help our students learn the correct way to find information. We will teach them what sites are reliable and which ones are not. Also with the material we are learning in this class we can teach them new techniques to get information. I think what is means to teach in the 21st century is that to teach our students what they need to know, we are going to have to adopt a whole new way of teaching and learning.

The title of each segment is also a link to the video or post that I am commenting on.