Blog Post #8

Richard Miller: This Is How We Dream

This video was very nice. Richard Miller explained how media is changing and how we need to take advantage of it. I thought it was funny that he mentioned a book that he had written came to have the same fate as other educational books. It is available on Amazon's website for fifty-nine cents. A lot of people don't go to libraries anymore to find a book that they want to read. They simply go online to find the full text or to buy it. Also, I loved what he said about ideas. He said that ideas don't belong to us individually, rather they belong to us as a culture. We must be in the business of sharing ideas freely.

I liked how he pointed out the collaborative benefits the web gives us. It allows for us to have different people who specialize in different areas collaborating together to create a production. We don't have to be in the same building, or even country, to create a piece of work together. We also have new ways of viewing things, such as newspapers. We can view the media through print based or moving image based material. I think the moving image based material is fascinating. It's like watching an event live. We are able to keep up with something instantaneously instead of having to wait for the results on the news.

He also talked about how in the world we live in today, our limits are mostly ones that we place on ourselves. I think this is so true. I have never heard of composing using the web itself. Even though I had never heard of it, there is someone out there who is doing it. His composition searches blogs all over the world and determines an emotional profile of the world moment by moment. I think Richard Miller is right in saying that we need inspiring teachers of new media for students.

I don't know how hard it is to learn how to use these new media tools, but I think it's something worth learning. We will want our students to learn how to use these tools. If they do, then they will be better prepared for what comes next. I think that if we want our students to thrive, we need to arm them with all the tools we can to help them. After all, that is what we are trying to do. We are trying to prepare them for their futures. If we don't help them understand these new tools and how to use them, we aren't preparing them with what they need to know.


The Chipper Series and EDM310 for Dummies



Though I can't think of any videos that I would like to produce or participate in, I do think these videos had good messages. In The Chipper Series video, the message that I got was that we have to work for the things we want. If we want to become teachers, we have to put in our time and effort. Not only do we need to do this, we also need to do this in the appropriate time given to us by our instructors. I think it did a good job  in showing us that the procrastinating and not showing up that a lot of us do in school is not accepted by our future bosses. We need to practice doing well in school, so we can do well in our future jobs. Just showing up doesn't mean that we deserve anything, such as a ribbon in Chipper's case. The message I got from the video EDM 310 for Dummies was that being prepared makes what we are trying to do much easier. We can't just expect to know how to use all the tools that we have to use for this class. If we did, there would be no reason to take the class. As the video showed, once we read the tutorials and understand how to use these tools it will be much easier and less stressful to do the work assigned in this class.



Critiques of Smartboards

In "The Innovative Instructor" the focus was mainly on the teachers and the administrators. In "Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards" the focus was mainly on the teachers. In the first critique, Michael Stanton argues that the teachers are still doing the same thing as they have been. They are standing at the front controlling the content and managing a bunch of students. He also says that the smartboards are a way for administrators to say that they are spending money on thing that they can point to and count. He argues that they aren't using the money to experiment with ways to improve learning outcomes, because they wouldn't be able to get the money for something that's not concrete. In Bill Ferriter's "Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards", the argument is made that the smartboards do little to promote independent discovery and collaborative work. He also says that the smartboards are poorly aligned with the vision of instruction that most people claim to believe in.

On the other hand, Silvia Tolisano's blog "Interactive Whiteboards-Which? How? What?" showed another side of the smartboards. In her blog, she was trying to get as much information on smartbaords as she could, because her school was contemplating acquiring smartboards for the classrooms. She explained how she went to a school that had smartboards to see it being used in the classroom setting. She watched a 5th grade class and saw that all the students had their eyes on the smartboardsmartboard. The student then showed her and the others students how to complete the task that was asked.

I think the main difference in these critiques has to do with the teacher. The technology itself will not change anything. It has to be used by a teacher who is willing to change what he or she is used to doing things. If the teacher keeps doing what has always been done, there is no need for the smartboard. However, if he or she is willing to learn how to incorporate the smartboard and research new ways of using it, then there is a lot that can be gained from it.