January 17, 2010

Did You Know? 3.0

This is a video that spouts random facts about the world and even makes a few premonitions about what the future may have in store, including a prediction of a

Wow… That was absolutely mind-blowing. Evolution has seriously played a role in not just the population of the people, but the way the population lives. Whenever I look at my iPhone, I always think about how much cellular phone technology has changed over time, but it’s something else completely when you think about what’s to come in the near future if things continue evolving at the rate it’s going. It seems frightening.

However, there were a few things in the film that I not only found shocking, but also somewhat confusing and unbelievable. Like the fact that India's population of Honor's level children is more than America has children! The entire population of India must completely overwhelm the US population, but does that include the illegal immigrants that we have? I mean, that has to add at least another thousand or so right? And I find it nearly impossible to believe that there are only 540,000 words in the English language. I could have sworn that we had millions and millions of words in our dictionary. I figured we had at least 1 million, but now we know that there is slightly more than half of that. And one last thing that I find amazing is the fact that in 2049 (if the world hasn't ended yet), the standard $1000 computer should be able to out think the entire world's population. That seems pretty out of this world. Just thinking about a computer that powerful makes me wonder exactly how long will it be before technology starts to think for itself and may possibly become self-sufficient, or possibly even a threat to humanity. Frightening thought.

Mr. Winkle Wakes

The story of Rip Van Winkle awakening after 100 years to find that the world had changed greatly. So great, to the point where it made Mr. Winkle sick to his stomach. There he finds that even the hospitals have become technologically advanced, which makes him uncomfortable so he leaves. He then comes across a school with students sitting quietly as the teacher lectures with a computer in the back of the room collecting dust, which gave him comfort.

At first, I didn't really understand the moral of the story, but after I watched it another couple of times, I think I finally get it. It's about the evolution of the world around us in all parts of the professional world, such as traffic safety, media, and medicine. However, the technology seems to have skipped over schools.

What's up with that? With the way the world is these days, we should be looking to the future by providing students with the tools they need for the continuously evolving trend of technology. If we continue to only use school books and lectures on them and ignore the media, they may be losing a lot of time to figure out these computer skills which can either make or break them in the long run. The sooner they learn how to master computer skills, they better off they will be in their future. Not just in school assignments, but also in helping them to decide on a career choice.

School Kills Skills

He, on top of being completely hilarious, is absolutely brilliant and correct. It's true that, in an effort on part of schools to bring all children and students to the same status quo, they great cripple the creativity of most people from a very young age. How often are children, who are just expressing themselves in art or writing, are told "That's not right, fix it!"? Back then, I used to think it was nothing more than a teacher teaching them something, however, now, I have come to realize that there's a lot more to it than that. These teachers are making them afraid to be wrong and that keeps them from trying to avoid being wrong. What a terribly sad fate. It's a lot like the elephant. At a young age, the elephant is tied to a stake and is unable to escape it, then when they are older, they remember how futile it was to try to move, so they prefer not to try. It's the same thing for children. They just figure "what's the point in trying if I would get just as much accomplished if I did nothing?" The schools should stick to correct the children on facts instead of criticizing them when they are being creative. If they are doing homework and got something incorrect, fix it, but if they are drawing or writing, leave them be.

Your Students' Digital Smarts

Mrs. Vicki Davis uses all forms of technology to educate her students, from cell phones to blogging, and even the online program called Open Sim, a gaming style platform that uses avatars to help students and teacher interact in an online 3-d world. She brings to light that student struggle primarily in the classrooms that use only ink and paper to teach. Also, she teaches to benefit each student based on their interests, instead of teaching them based on the curriculum. They also made use of Digi-teen in order to connect and share information with one another.

I can easily say that if my grade school had used anything even remotely close to what they did in their classroom, it would have made my experience there so much more effective. I could tell you honestly right now that I could not recall or even care less about anything I learned in high school or lower because not a bit of it mattered to me. It all seemed so droll and boring. They never tried to make anything matter to us. Looking back it seemed as though they were only trying to justify their paychecks. They didn't care that it didn't matter to us so long as they were teaching it. And that is the flaw with the teaching I grew up with. Use of technology will definitely play a role in my classroom. I also plan to make sure that it matters to them, because I know first hand that if they don't care about it, they won't learn a bit of it.