Chapters 1 and 2 of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology

After reading the first chapter, it makes me kind of scared to enter into the world of teaching, but also very excited. I am scared because teaching isn't going to be what I saw my mother doing. I excited though because I am learning about technology now, and I can be prepared for what schools are going to expect (no technology) and what the students are going to need (more understanding of technology). I feel that it is not a good idea for schools to not give money to teachers for technology because students from a very young age are using more and more technology a day, from cell phones to computers to iPads. Students are beginning to learn for themselves at a young age too, and when they come into school, not having technology available will stunt their learning.

As soon as I started reading chapter 2, I found it incredibly interesting that technology does so much. Page 9 has a list of things that technology does: "reading and interacting with the web; writing memos and sending email; computing with spreadsheets and statistical analysis programs; analyzing problems with data visualization tools; creating social networking sites; marketing with digital video tools; and making presentations with PowerPoint."

"Reading, writing, calculating, and thinking are what education is all about."

This statement is so true, yet teachers and/or administrators don't want to stray away from the traditional teaching, using books and lectures. In order to read, write, calculate, and think in today's age, there needs to be an understanding of technology. This will in turn allow students to think in new ways that will advance their thinking. This chapter really nails in the idea that everything is changing: how we think, how we communicate, and even how we learn. Communication isn't just now taking a test and telling the teacher, "Oh, I don't really understand this." Instead, there are so many ways to now communicate, through technology, through classroom work using other assessments other than worksheets and tests..

The chapter addresses a topic of "just-in-time learning." This notion is that whenever you need to learn something else in order to accomplish a task, you can find out what you need to know. This notions contradicts the tradition notion of educators that you need to learn everything you can possible while in school just in case you need to know it later. With this said, we spend over 15 years in school learning stuff that we don't really need to know. It isn't a waste of time, but to the person who knows exactly what they are good at, such as the student who drops out and becomes the inventor of the computer, they spend time in class not really learning. "The skills necessary for just-in-time learning are more skill-based than fact-based." This learning of skills will be more beneficial to everyone because they will be able to apply those skills to anything in life.

This chapter also focuses on enhancing learning through customization, learner control (a part of customization), interaction, scaffolding (a part of education, whether you incorporate technology or not), games and simulation, multimedia, publication, and reflection (again, an important part of education whether there is the incorporation of technology or not).

Credibility of Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division

http://www.dhmo.org/

This website has a lot of positives going for it. For example, it was last updated today. That shows that the person creating this keeps on working on it. Also, there are supporters for the page. For example, the translation is powered by AltaVista Babel fish and the page is hosted by AgoraNet. AgoraNet is a site for small businesses. I appreciate that the website ables you to email them about questions. They say they can't reply to every one of the messages, but they do read them all. The website offers payment options for purchasing DHMO goods, but I probably wouldn't buy anything from this website because when I looked at the goods in their store, there weren't even real pictures; they were cartoon t-shirts. I would probably use the information from this website because their information is given in a format that is reliable. For example, their FAQs aren't questions about how to pronounce a last name. Instead, the questions are "what is Dihydrogen Monoxide" and "should I be concerned about Dihydrogen Monoxide?"

Credibility of All About Explorers

http://allaboutexplorers.com/

I found something interesting right away while first investigating the website. When I clicked on the authors link on the top of the page, it led me to a list of authors. At the bottom, it said, "Hmm, not buying it? Click here for the real story." I clicked and it lead me to a page with only two authors on it. I can't tell if that is reliable or not. I actually do not like it. However, I do appreciate that they offered the "authors" link. The site also had a link for references. However, on the references page, the first thing you see is "Reliable Research Sources." It's almost like they feel the need to sell you the fact that their references are reliable. Instead, what they should have done was take that out, because before I saw that, I did think the sources could be reliable. I also looked for the credit for the website, and at the bottom of the page, there was a link for "wordpress." I clicked on it, and wordpress happens to be a blogging site. This could be reliable if the authors were scholars. However, if I were going to do research, this isn't a website I would use.

Credibility of Martin Luther King Jr. website

http://martinlutherking.org/

I was not very pleased to observe this site because I felt it was very racist. Just because Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American doesn't mean he was a rapper or that he celebrated Kwanzaa. There also wasn't an author, except for "stormfront," which when I clicked on it, it lead me to a "White Pride World Wide" website. Unless I am a racist looking for more racist support, there would be no use of this website for me. Terrible website. This is not accurate, it is not valid, and there is no reliability.

Credibility on ZPi: Save the Pacific Northwest...

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

I am thinking that this website is not a credible source for a few reasons. However, to begin with, there is one thing that could fool a reader. The site was recently updated in September, with recent "news" from October. This could fool someone because it shows that the person creating this site is keeping up with recent news; it isn't just a gig that someone made up ten years ago. This is the only positive to this site. Using the guidelines from kathyschrock.net, finding information about the author wasn't easy. I found it in the FAQ area, and the frequently asked questions just happened to be about his last name and how to pronounce it. Odd questions to be frequently asking.. Also, at the bottom of the page, there was a line that said this website had no connections to any other schools, universities, or scholars except for "Wild Haggis Conservation Society." Most societies are for students. I couldn't even click on a link from the page to investigate on the society. Also, this is just personal value, but the page was very hard to read and didn't act as a scholarly page. I wouldn't trust information from this website.

Creating a screencast

This was my first time ever creating a screencast, and let's just say, the end product is better than I thought it was going to be the whole time creating it. There definitely were some difficulties in creating a screencast. For example, I had a difficult time getting the jing capture to fit my whole screen since it only goes to a certain length. I also had personal difficulty explaining wallwisher.com while trying to read my script. I tried explaining without reading, but my train of thought went askew. Next time, I might try to memorize what I would like to say. Creating a screencast was also fun, though, because I got to hear myself using advanced technology. I'm not usually advanced in technology and doing a screencast proves to myself that I can work with technology. I look forward to using screencasting in my classroom, and I might use screencasting for other things, just for fun (maybe even my wedding website!). I'm just proud of myself that I created something that someone else might be able to use in the future! I think I might like to post a screencast on how to create a screencast; might be kind of fun! Here is the link to what I created!!http://www.screencast.com/t/2sazEegQz0et  Enjoy!

Epilogue of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts

I enjoyed the epilogue: it wasn't anything that I expected. It was a story of a teacher who, in the matter of 15 minutes, created a literature homework assignment and sent an email to the parents notifying them that their child has homework, scanned a compiled list of summaries that links to all the work his students did last night, has scanned a New York Times article that his journalism students will use, bookmarked and saved to his Diigo toolbar, looked as his RSS feeds to read up on the lastest news, and organized his email inbox, all in time to open his classroom door to the sound of happy students. The epilogue pretty much summed up the entire book, with all of the uses that technology offers, from podcasts to RSS feeds to weblogs to bookmarking. As an educator, it is important to understand how to use technology for yourself, the parents, and most importantly, the students. In the epilogue, the teacher set up a connection between the teacher and parents where parents can receive a notification that their child has homework that night. I think it reallly is incredible that the teacher did all of this in such a short time. This makes more time to work with the students, and also more time to focus on the students. I definitely intend to use as much technology in my classroom that I can, for my benefit and most importantly, my students' benefit. As a special education teacher, research is coming out showing that technology is one of the most beneficial tactics for students in a special education setting. With that said, I will do everything I can to learn about technology for the benefit of my students.