kids are always bored...

After reading the article I thought to myself, maybe kids have always been bored in class. Before, there probably wan not a way to escape the boredom. Nowadays, due to the number of technologies and types available there are so many ways for students to escape boredom in school settings. I think teachers are doing their jobs, however, they need to take note of these technological distractions. In my opinion, instead of viewing these inappropriate uses of technology as a distraction or threat, but rather overcoming it. I think that teachers could use this effectively in the classroom in minor ways to begin with. For example, a cell phone, these days is most common. Most students own a cellphone, and for that reason they have become a distraction in the classroom. While teachers are teaching the curriculum, students tend to send text messages, play games, or surf the internet. The teacher can engage the student in using the cellphone by asking an educational question, and asking the student to come up with an answer using his or her cellphone. i think this concept will catch the student off-guard and if anything encourage the student to learn outside of the traditional school system boundaries. This is just a thought, similar educational boosters can be used with other technologies such as ipods, cameras, ect.

..Online Photo Albums & Slideshows

This week has been rough for me.  There was a loss in the family, which truly caught me off guard and unexpectedly.  Due to the loss in my family this past week has been full of kayos.  For that reason, I did not get a chance to post until today.  While all of this "tough stuff" I call it was going on, I began to notice how much more reliant we are on technology to do things.  

In the past, I have attended various funerals, however, none of them were anything like the one I attended yesterday.  The funeral service, aside from the speeches was accompanied by a slideshow, which was shown on two large projection screens.  In the past a tribute was given verbally or shown through pictures in frames or photo albums, from what I had seen.  This whole concept of using technology at a funeral service, to me, was a phenomenal idea.  It saved the family  a lot of time as all we had to do was gather photos which we liked of my grandfather and produce a online photo album.  This album was then emailed to the funeral director who made sure that it was played at the funeral.  This process, was quite simple and the website that we used really make it easy to upload photos and create an album.  If we had made the photo-album by hand, it would  not have been completed as quick nor had the same effect that the slide-show of the photo album did.  In addition, the bonus was that instead of having to worry about producing more albums, the convenience of technology allows us to burn more copies for the entire family at the click of a button.  

How does this related to technology? Well, I was thinking in high school, more specifically, planning 10 we were asked to create a portfolio of our life-long journey thus far as learners.  During that time we were asked to compile pictures, past assignments, and objects that were meaningful to us.  We would create these portfolios simply by going to our local Staples, purchasing poster-boards, markers and construction paper.  Not only was this process costly but I think in this day and age with the amount of technology present we would turn an assignment like this into a technological assignment.  Instead, students could use online photo-albums, where they could upload personal photos of themselves, online images, graphics, scanned assignments, the list of possibilities are endless.  To present their journeys, students could work with the technology to demonstrate to the class how far they have come along.  This interaction between the student and the technology to complete a more creative assignment would be very beneficial.  

Kids, kids, kids, technology, technology, technology!!!!!!!!!!!

So, this weekend, I spent a lot of time sitting around with my five year old cousin from Prince George who is definitely quite the super star when it comes to computers. When he first arrived at my house, and asked to use my laptop computer, I was very resistant. I was thinking, of a way to say no, yet at the same time seem polite. I am not greedy or anything, rather have many assignments and useful documents saved onto my laptop. My cousin looked at me with comfort in his eyes and simply said “I just want to upload some pictures of the family, so you can see them”. I looked at him with this sort of fascination in my face. At his age, I don’t even think I knew how to properly turn on a computer, and this kid wanted to upload pictures? WOW! To me, just hearing these words was amazing. Yes, I know children are more exposed to computers, which makes them well rounded learners and more familiar with technology, but never did I think that they would be this knowledgeable.

Doubts aside, I let little Isaiah use my laptop. Within minutes, he had navigated through my computer and uploaded family pictures. I was truly amazed, almost speechless. Boy did this kid blow me away. In shock, and full of curiosity I asked him, “How did you learn how to do this Isaiah, at school?” he replied “by myself”. After hearing that, I truly realized the benefits that a child can be introduced to simply by being given an opportunity to work with a computer. Not only did Isaiah use his time and patience to learn how to complete such a task, he was given the ability to learn a skill that would not have been introduced at school otherwise.

This learning experience for Isaiah, opened a whole new perspective on technology and learning for me. After viewing this personal experience, I have began to recognize and appreciate the countless amount of learning opportunities and resources that that available to a child at the click of a button. Wow, what an eye opener!

How are students different today than 10, 20, years ago?

Students 10-20 years ago followed the traditional model of teaching.  As a part of the traditional model of teaching students learned with minimal resources such as paper, pencils and textbooks.  During this time, teachers served as the main source of knowledge.  Students, therefore, directly attained knowledge through the information provided by the teacher.  In part of the students, not much thinking was required nor involved, as they were only expected to learn through the parameters of a published course textbook.

Today, student are more independent, and thus no longer rely on teachers to learn.  Due to the countless amount of resources available on the world wide web, teachers no longer serve as the information holders.  Teachers now, have moved closer to a facilitating role, where they are responsible to only facilitate the students learning. It is impossible for the teacher to cover the endless amount of information available online.  Students have began to teach themselves through technology, and thus have become much more reliant on it.  For this reason, students now prefer to  type assignments rather than handwrite them out.  In my opinion, this creates issues, that may not have been existent 10 to 20 years ago.   Students are confronted with issues when asked to write assignments or tests by hand because they are reliant on resources such as spell check and thesaurus that are available via the computer.  Finally, the introduction of computers and technology broadens the amount of information a student is introduced to, however, in my opinion also limits the amount of solitary thinking involved for the individual.

The introduction of computers and technological advances, has made a significant difference to both teaching and learning.  Teachers are expected to be aware of more resources.  This is due to the fact that students are already exposed to resources through self-learning at home or on their own spare time.  As a result of this exposure, students are equipped with more knowledge, which can be viewed both positively or negatively.