Reflection on Integration Literacy Video

I think this classroom looks very dynamic, and this woman appears to be a wonderful and engaging teacher. I love that she believes that her students should be able to teach her things that she does not know how to do. "Learning to learn" should be the principal behind all education. It is not the content that matters (well, it does, but there is more to it than that). It is the skill that matters. If it were only content, then no one would learn anything outside of school.

I do wonder though what it is she teaches. She appears to be teaching just a technology class. As an English concentration, I would be interested in seeing more about how English teachers integrate technology into their classrooms while still maintaining the traditional connections to people, discussions and actual books. I feel these aspects are exceptionally important, and that they should be enhanced, not replaced, by technology.

Reflection on Education 2.0 Video

This video really made me think about the issues that have been coming up in some of my other classes, in particular how America is falling so far behind educationally compared to the other super powers of the world today, and yet how our confidence is simply through the roof. Children of America have access to so much information, and at the same time it feels as though they really have not accessed it. American children fully and completely believe that they still have the same standing in the world as their counterparts so many generations ago, when America was the "promised land." Well, we no longer are that land, but we certainly still believe it.

This video presented the "world" of today's child as cell phones, PSPs, computers and Ipods; it's definitely an ADD nation. This was a portrait of multi-tasking, and this is confirmed by the statement "The average student today will have 10 to 14 careers." Ten to 14?? How can anyone be successful at 10 to 14 different things? This makes me feel like we are preparing our children to "float" from job to job, to try something out until it gets boring or hard and then just bounce on over to something else. If the cell phone battery dies, if you get tired of listening to music, if you get frustrated that you can't beat your video game--you just turn it off and head over to the next gadget.

What happened to this classroom?

I'm not saying no to technology. It has great resources. I'm just saying that I'm concerned that in our rush to embrace technology, maybe we are forgetting about the most important resource we have: ourselves and each other. Interacting is a skill. I hope we aren't losing it.

Picasion

This is the link to my Picasion Assignment. Overall, I found this assignment to be very easy. I already know how to make screenshots, and how to upload pictures to a website, so it was not difficult to complete this. This seems like it could be a very useful tool for keeping track of student's projects and assignments, and making sure they have actually completed them.

Creating My Blog/My First Experiences in an Online Class

This is my first experience ever blogging, so I'm not entirely sure how to start. I suppose I will start with a little bio.

I was born in and grew up in Ohio, and I really feel that is a big part of who I am. I moved to New York to go to college in the city, at New School University, where I attended for 2 years. It was a great school that focused on interdisciplinary studies, and was "alternative" in the sense that there were no tests or textbooks. Assessments were through writing, and our readings came from publications in the fields we were studying. I loved it there, but moved on after 2 years. I moved to Fishkill, where I have decided to stay, and eventually started going to the Mount. I finished my degree in English there in 2009. My son Aiden was born in December 2009, and in Spring 2010 I began my Masters program in Adolescent Education. Currently, I am attending classes, working as a substitute teacher in both Beacon and Poughkeepsie, working very part-time in the grocery department at Shoprite in Fishkill, and working at the Office of Distance Education on campus.

This is my first experience in an online course. So far, it is going okay, but it is a little frustrating. I am good with technology, so it isn't so much that I am not able to handle the different ways that we are using technology. For me, it is more that I am so used to the traditional classroom, that it is just frustrating having the entire process changed. We are all having to relearn the way a classroom works, and this is exhausting and time consuming. In the end, I guess it is better that we are learning this now rather than later.

I really would like to incorporate technology into my classroom in some way. Kids today have never known the world without technology--granted, I essentially haven't either, but my life has never been nearly as absorbed in technology as kids I see in schools today. Their daily lives work around cell phones and Ipods, and they are constantly connected to the internet. Technology has become so pervasive, but kids really should also know how to use it in constructive ways. So, if I'm going to teach that, then obviously I'll have to learn it. But my point is, I'm glad in a way that I am going through that process now, rather than trying to figure it out at the same time I'm trying to teach it.

I am excited for the many ways I could possibly use technology. As an English teacher, I will obviously be using it for research and for writing, but I'm hoping to do more. I'm hoping to challenge my students to publish themselves, at least online, and to try to involve themselves in important academic or even political "conversations." Hopefully this class will allow me to more exciting ways to incorporate technology into my classes.