Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Blog Post # 5

iSchool Initiative


The iSchool initiative

This video done by Travis Allen was very interesting and exciting. The iSchool could change so many things about education, and help in so many ways. It would be useful for students to communicate better with teachers and give them a more hands on learning experience. This would be better for special needs students, because fighting to get them technology to learn wouldn't be an issue. Every student would have it. Also Travis pointed out in the video this could benefit the world around us. No paper in school ever again? That's insane to think of how many trees that could save! I think it's also a good idea, because with the iSchool students would be limited to only things related to school. They wouldn't be on Facebook rather than doing their assignment.

Travis Allen's ZeitgeistYoungMinds

This second video by Travis is a continuum of his previous video. After making his first video at seventeen this video was done while he was twenty years old, and he has made so much progress with his idea since. He is now a college student, and he travels the country with a team of twenty-five students trying to inspire schools to embrace mobile learning. His iSchool initiative has received international exposure. His idea to rebuild the way we teach to match the world around us makes complete sense. Why not teach kids with the things they will be using once they have jobs? Most jobs I know of use computers and digital devices constantly everyday.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir

I have to say this is awesome. All of the people in this video have never met before, yet they were able to perform this perfectly. Something like this you may say is impossible until you actually see it. I guess with the right person and determination anything is possible. This use of the internet shows how much we can do with technology. This shows there are really no limits.

Teaching 21st Century Students

According to Kevin Roberts if all teachers do is teach facts then our role as an educator is obsolete. Students can retrieve facts from anywhere today with the use of the internet. He believes we should teach students skills in order to learn how to use the internet effectively. We need our students to be engaged to learn, and he believes using technology can do this.It's our job as educators to try to incorporate this into the way we teach. I do agree with this. I think it is important to engage kids more, and in order to do that, using technology would be much easier than pencil and paper. I know this from personal experience. I saw firsthand how the use of Smart Boards really gets the students attention and excites them. As an educator I wouldn't say this wouldn't really affect me, because I'm not a educator yet so I have nothing to change. However, if I learn these things before I start teaching I'll be better prepared to incorporate technology into the way I teach.

Flipping the classroom is a great idea. I have family members who work in education, and this is one of the main issues. Not having enough time after lecturing to give each student what they need to achieve. This idea of sending lectures out before class is awesome. This gives the teacher so much more time to make sure each student understands the topic. I'd definitely like to use this in the future, because this would enable me to make sure more students actually learn.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Jessica@!This is Ashaunte Gaillard. I have to start off by saying that you are a great writer. I especially loved your post about Teaching in the 21st Century. However, I think that some of your posts were a little broad. For example: the post about Travis Allen and the mobile class. You can probably talk about how he would make this mobile classroom happen and the benefits and negative aspects of his idea. You could talk about what he would use to make the mobile classrooms effective and other things. Another thing that I noticed was that you forgot to place html links for the Flipping the classroom posts. Overall, I thought your blog and writing was great!
    Keep up the good work!
    Ashaunte

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  2. Your discussion about Travis Allen's iSchool Initiative is general and unspecific, like the assignment might have been skimmed over. Your description of a flipped classroom is up to par.

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  3. Hi Jessica! I think your writing is decent and I had not found any punctuation or grammatical errors. I honestly must say that I think your post was a bit vague. The very first paragraph gave little insight to Travis Allen's first video. If I had not already known what it was about I would have no idea what you are talking about. You mentioned "The iSchool could change so many things about education, and help in so many ways." but you gave no other information about what the iSchool is. Also, you didn't have the links for Flipping the Classroom videos. Those were a favorite part of mine for this blog post so, I'm a bit disappointed you didn't add those. If you have any questions or want me to help you with anything just let me know and I'll be more than happy!

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