Blog Post 8

This is a perfect picture to sum up my blog post for this week!

Richard Miller – This is How We Dream

In Richard Miller’s “This is How We Dream” he talks about how communication has changed over the years. He talks about how communication has evolved and we now have the capability of communicating with or from anywhere in the world, instantly.

He goes in to great detail about the writing process and how it is now possible to complete research papers without ever stepping foot in to an actual library. He gives the example of how he was asked to write a paper for the one-year anniversary after the shooting at Virginia Tech. He uses a screen recorder to show how he can use things such as Google Docs and online libraries to create his entire research paper. Everything can be researched on the World Wide Web and once published it stays on the Internet forever. He goes in to detail about how it easy to collaborate on papers and other things via sharing documents through Google Docs. This is much easier than creating a document to send through e-mail and creating more copies of the same document multiple times.

Richard Miller believes that this is the method that students will use when writing. Technology and society is changing constantly, and I cannot stress that enough in each and every blog that I write. The 21st century student is evolving and it’s important that they know all of these skills. Becoming the 21st century teacher or the 21st century student is going to be a process but that process has already begun. Soon students will access all of their work all over the Internet and use applications via iPads and e-mail to access their books. Virtually, everything is going to end up being done online. Richard Miller’s dream is obviously achievable and his dream has already started to become true.

My favorite part of this video was when Miller stated, “The largest restrictions are the ones that we put upon ourselves.” That statement couldn’t hold any more true.

EDM310 is Different

After watching the Chipper Series and EDM310 for Dummies at the beginning of the semester I was kind of worried that EDM310 was going to be a hard class. I have come to the conclusion that EDM310 isn’t necessarily “hard” because of the assignments that are given but because you have to be self-driven. The assignments are time consuming and make you think but if you take out the nine hours per week that was asked of you before you even entered the class then it’s not as difficult as you would expect. The Chipper Series reiterates this message. She tries to just get by all of the time and it never works out for her. You cannot just “get by” in EDM310. It’s sort of an all or nothing type deal. You can either A) Choose to do the work that is assigned to you and complete it in a timely manner while doing so OR B) You can slack off fall behind and make it extremely difficult to catch up.

The Chipper Series is a video that is about cheating yourself. If you don’t do the work you’re given and you don’t set goals for yourself how will you ever become a responsible teacher? If you cannot complete assignments on time how will you expect your students to do so? I think that this class is not only wonderful because you learn so much about teaching in the 21st century but it also teaches you about responsibility. It would be quite hard to hold a job in the educational field if you were irresponsible and unorganized like Chipper was in this video.

EDM310 for Dummies was funny as well. Sometimes I feel like there really should be a book for this class because it can be so confusing. The great part about it is Dr. Strange’s favorite quote, “I don’t know. Let’s find out.” If there is something you don’t know how to do and you can’t figure it out on your own there is ALWAYS someone on the EDM staff available to help you.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

I was in awe as soon as this video began. How is it possible that education was ranked the lowest, even below coal mining? People would not even know how to coal mine without someone teaching them to do so! Education is so important and our classrooms today are not engaging students enough. They need to be able to be creative and to express themselves in school. They should enjoy school with their friends just as much as they enjoy being with their friends while they are not in school. Technology is a major factor in today’s schools. The world’s technology and how we learn is constantly changing, but the classroom is staying the same. Why is this? This video reminded me of Mr. Winkle Wakes, where everything changes over 100 years, with the exception of education. These students are growing up in the 21st century! We, as educators, need to educate them like we are in the 21st century as well.

RSAnimate – The Secret Powers of Time

This video was very interesting. It talked about how people live three different times. These three times are the past, the present, and the future. The people who live in the past are the ones who are always pondering on what has happened to them. They think of all of the good time and the bad times as well. The people who choose to live in the present choose to live for the moment. They don’t like to plan, but they just sort of go with the flow because they belive their life is lead by fate. There are two types of people who live in the future. The first are those who have learned to work hard instead of playing. The second types are those who believe eternal life begins after their physical death.

The narrator draws pictures to represent everything he talks about in the video. He talks about how different cultures each have their own place of life. I couldn’t agree with this more. He wants to take kids who are “past oriented” and show them how to be “future oriented.” I thought the question about having an eighth day of the week was interesting. If I had an extra day in my week I would probably choose to spend it with family. I never get enough time with them because I am an hour away from home. I am always busy on weekends working and finishing schoolwork. I would definitely make my extra day a day designated to relax with the most important people in my life. Speaking of family, I couldn’t believe only about twenty percent of families have dinner together. I have done that with my family my whole life. It didn’t matter where I was my mom always made me be home for dinner.

This overall was a good video. It was hard to follow during some parts because it moved so fast but I definitely enjoyed it.

RSAnimate – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Hence the title, this video was about motivation and what motivates us. He opened the video with the quote, “We are not as endlessly manipulated and predictable as you would think.” People like to be self- motivated. We naturally want to be better at things. For instance, someone who has a love for sports is going to continue to work harder and harder to get better and better. They have the motivation to win that keeps them wanting to achieve more. He talks about rewarding people for their accomplishments and how it is better than punishing someone for their mistakes. Don’t rag on someone for doing the wrong thing but instead praise him or her for doing the right thing. When he spoke about how higher incentives lead to worse performance I was dumbfounded. I would definitely expect the total opposite. After listening to him speaks about it I had a better understand. From listening to him, my understanding of what he said was that people like a challenge. Challenge motivates people to do well, however, people want to feel like they are making a contribution as well. When people feel like they have contributed to something positive they feel more successful.

I think this goes back to the idea of becoming an educator. Being an educator will always be a constant challenge. The challenge of educating children and helping them become successful. I feel that becoming an educator will be worth the challenge because the contribution I will be making is a far greater feeling of accomplishment than anything else I can imagine.