“Did you know” was a video full of statistics about the United States in comparison to other countries. Did you know that India has more honors children than America has children? Did you know that China is soon to be the number one English speaking country? Did you know that by the age of 38 the average person would have had between 10-14 jobs? Did you know that if MySpace were a country it would be the fifth largest country in the world due to its 200 million members? Did you know that there are more text messages sent in one day than there are people on earth?
Technology information is consistently doubling every two years. This means that two years from now when I graduate college all of the information I learned in school will be outdated because of new information being discovered. As much of this information is hard to believe, all of it is true. Internet is going to continue to expand as well as technology and the longer it takes the United States to catch up the further we will continue to fall behind no matter how hard we try. Our students will not stand a chance to the rest of the students in the world unless we start using technology, more often than not, in our classroom.
Mr. Winkle Wakes
Mr. Winkle is a man who wakes up after being asleep for 100 years. After being asleep for 100 years he discovers that everything that he remembered from before, has changed. Everything changed except for one thing … the school systems and education. While they were creating all of this technology such as lasers, x-rays, and new computing systems they left out education.
I think it is a cool video that has a good lesson behind it. Education is one of the most important things in the world and yet it is the only thing that got left behind. Our education system is so outdated that Mr. Winkle woke up from a 100 year sleep and still felt at home in our education system. This explains why the United States is so far behind other countries. We need to integrate technology more in the classroom and change the way our education system is being handles. Education practices should change with technology in order to keep our school systems up to date. We have become too comfortable with our ‘typical’ ways in education to even realize how far behind we really are.
Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity
This is an important video for everyone, especially future educators. Children need Creativity in the classroom. The way that our educators are teaching in the classroom is killing students’ creativity rather than nourishing it. All children have specific talents and teachers squander them.
Arts and creativity in the classroom is just as important as our history, math, and literature. If we as future educators could integrate art and creativity in to our daily school subjects students would be more excited to learn. This would create a more balanced system and instead of robbing children of their creativity they help to broaden it.
Cecelia Gault
Sir Ken Robinson was interview by a young reporter in Finland. She basically agreed with the points that were made in the video about creativity. In order to catch up with other countries in the world we need creativity and technology to stay up to date and use educational systems to their full potential. If we could incorporate visual art, theatre, dance, music, and technology along with creativity in to the classroom we would see a huge success in our classrooms.
Vicki Davis: Harness You Students’ Digital Smarts
Vicki Davis is an educator who knows the importance of keeping up to date with technology in the classroom. She speaks about the Internet and technology and how important it is to integrate it in to our classroom. She uses technology to connect her students to the rest of the world via the Internet. She points out that all students have different learning styles and that only certain students can learn with a pen a paper. She mentions how important it is for her, as well as her students, to stay hip with the latest technology. She also says that it is okay if she doesn’t know everything because there is always room to learn. She not only teaches her students, but her students teach her as well.
Maybe, if we had more teachers like Ms. Davis the United States wouldn’t be as far behind as some of the countries compared in the “Did You Know?” video.
I believe that the main purpose of requiring us to view the five videos is to show us as citizens of the United States’ as well as future educators how far behind the United States is when it comes to technology; especially in the classroom. I believe that EDM 310 is going to be an eye opening class in itself and that there is much to learn about the technological world. I have never taken a class like this before but I believe that it will be an interesting and much needed course for future educators.
