Blog 5, Media and Technology

1.       Overall I really enjoyed Dr. Roberts’ presentation.  He was entertaining, engaging, funny, and informative. One of the most relevant parts of Dr. Roberts’ presentation was the amount of media exposure and use kids have.  I felt like kids now need to have all this exposure to music or television while doing other activities.  While he was talking, I was wondering if my students NEED to have some sort of music or other stimulus during class to make it more normal for their life.  I also found it interesting that television time goes up and down, and up again depending on the school level they are at.  I never thought about the amount of free time away from school as more opportunity to watch television.  Questions I would have for Dr. Roberts would be finding out how much family time kids have and if that has any relation to the media exposure and use and also if the increase in media exposure changes how the average kid’s attention span or interest in non-media related activities.  And also the effects of multitasking, whether it stimulates more of their brain, or less of their brain because you are not totally focused in only one media source.  I would also ask him how things like music videos get categorized since it includes two medias coming from one source.

2  .     3. After reading the article “More Pupils Are Learning Online, Fueling Debate on Quality”, I felt like k-12 classes should not be online.  I think that online programs can help students improve in subjects, but the entire class should not be given online.  Classes online allow for plagiarism to be accessed easier, Googling answers on a potential online test or essay, and even students not doing the work they are supposed to do.  Since no teacher can see who is doing the work, a high achieving friend could be doing the work for a student who doesn’t have the skills to read, write, etc. There are also social problems that I can see developing with students who attend online school, or even home school for multiple years.  They won’t have access to the social interactions, communicating with others, and eye contact.  Something else I wonder about is what makes the online classes easier to pass than the standard class? Why would allowing online classes increase graduation rates? There has to be a lower standard or easier to pass the online class than the tradition class.  If it is a problem with students waking up and going to class, then online classes are not teaching them responsibility for their own life.  If they want a job, and they only want to work at certain hours, it’s going to be too bad because you are probably not going to be given a choice in work hours. 

I know that at my school, there were some students who the school is responsible for, but they do not attend the school.  I don’t know if these students are homeschooled, or online school, or what kind of schooling they were receiving, but they are definitely missing out on content and interactions that in class school provides.  I do think that practice and education in computer and online skills are necessary for kids now.  My elementary school does have a computer lab and there are one or two computers in each classroom.  I do not think that my students should be taking classes online, but maybe there could be online components to the class to help improve their computer skills.

Something I can do in the future is to try to have my students use more technology in the classroom and use the computer lab more.  Computers are the future, and without computer skills life will be much harder for them when they grow up.  Something I should also try to teach them about computers is that everything online is not true, there are sites that can give you good information, and that things you put online can potentially stay somewhere online forever.  I could also try to include interaction with medias other than paper, but at the same time I wonder if they need to have more interaction with paper media.

4. One link I used was http://www.dropbox.com/
I could use this by doing some lessons on one computer, finishing them up on another computer without emailing or using a flash drive.  This way I would not need to bring anything at all, all I would need is the internet and a device to access internet.  I can see this being useful to with collaborating with other teachers.  We could all share a lesson or document and be able to use it and make small changes if we wanted also.  Depending on where I work in the future, I can see this being useful potentially for high school students to use in a group project for all the members to have access to files and update or change them.
http://www.superteachertools.com/

This website has a lot of tools.  One that I looked into with some detail was the seating chart maker.  Last year I made my seating chart by using word and making a bunch of squares and writing names in each square.  This tool would make creating seating charts so much easier and more time efficient.  It also has a print button to print out what I have made.  If I wanted to change the seating arrangement, all I need to do is drag the desk to a new area and I would be done. 
http://teachertube.com
This site is pretty much the youtube of teacher videos.  There are some quality educational videos, as well as some student project videos.  Some of the videos I can see using in my class to give my students more access to technology as well as visuals and information in another voice and in other words than the way I would present it.  I know youtube is not allowed at my school, but hopefully teachertube is not blocked.

http://prezi.com

I have seen Meg use this program a lot this summer, and the format always looks so cool.  I remember the first time I saw it I thought of it as a better power point.  I tried playing around with it a little bit, and to make it look really nice I need a lot more practice using it.  There are so many things to add and other options to how you would like your presentation to be.  I could definitely use this to show some pictures and small amounts of information, but the program is so engaging while watching it, I think a lot more students will be engaged just from observing the cool transitions from slide to slide.