Blog Post #8

This Is How We Dream

This Is How We dream by Dr. Richard Miller is a series of two lectures that talks about how collaboration between humanities and sciences and the ideal way of learning. In the beginning of his lecture, Dr. Miller focuses of the incremental change from paper learning, such as books, magazine articles, etc., to digital and online text. He goes into detail of how all the different usages of how tools, such as the internet, makes life and learning easier. One example that he included in his lecture is a personal one to prove that it really is a great tool to take advantage of. His example was that he was once asked to write an article about Virginia Tech for the one year anniversary after the famous massacre. He was able to write his whole article without even stepping foot into a library for research. After his article was printed, it made its way from the publishers to his fellow professors to the trash. However, a his work remained forever online as an online text copy.
In the second half of his lecture, he talked about the ideal learning process. In his ideal learning process, Dr. Miller said that there had to be ideas and creativity. I agree with him in this statement because without a combination of both of these, how can the learning process be more than just teaching students while they burp back answers? How can we make learning interesting? We need inspiring teachers to help motivate and want students to be interested in learning. We also need inspiring spaces so that students walk into a classroom and not just see four walls and some posters. The spaces should make students crawl out of their skins with eagerness to learn.
This is a very inspiring video to watch. At first, I was a little confused on what exactly this video was talking about. However, after continuing to watch it, I had a better understanding of it. Dr. Miller said that a lot of the resources that we need for the ideal learning process has not yet been created. However, until it has it is up to educators to do the best they can to make it an enjoyable process for students and teachers alike. I really enjoyed these this lecture and recommend others to watch it.

Blog Post #12

Blog Post #12 by Carly Pugh was an assignment she had to do for her EDM 310 class at the University of South Alabama. Her assignment was to create her own original assignment she felt her professor should have assigned that the he may use in a later class. Her assignment was actually a very interesting one. She thought that the students should create a YouTube playlist of videos that described the following:
1). describe the kind of teacher you would like to be
2).show ways you can motivate your students
3). offer tips on classroom management.
4). offer tutorials on programs you have learned about in this class that you like so much you would like to use (podcast, iPods, PLN's, etc.)
5). are on topics related to your field of study; for example, if you are going to be an English Teacher, include videos about Shakespeare, poetry, novels, things of that nature.
6). describe what a good teacher is and what a bad teacher is
7). ways to improve modern education as we know it
8). have been used in other blog posts from this semester. It could be a video you had to write about or one posted on the blog of a fellow classmate, teacher, or classroom's blog.
9). center around creativity.
10). advocate challenging, motivating, encouraging, and supporting students (but still maintaining professionalism)

In my opinion, her post closely identifies with the ideas that Dr. Richard Miller mentioned in his lecture The is How We Dream in the fact that it shows some of the many ways technology could be used. In this way students would be able to describe their ideas with a list of videos and share them with their fellow students and the world. Doing this, their work is now open so that others may comment on their work offering ideas and other criticism to help them improve their work and even their ideas. This is how technology can be used as a tool for collaboration without students even being in the same room. Carly's assignment was very interesting and probably a lot fun to do.

The Chipper Series and EDM 310 for Dummies

EDM 310 for Dummies and The Chipper Series are vote very humorous videos about the EDM 310 class. The message I received from the videos is that this class is difficult because it's not a simple "burp back class." Dr. Strange pointed us in the direction. However, it is up to us to complete the journey of the learning process. We have to teach ourselves if we want to be successful. A video I think I would like to participate in would be one that show what tools are learned in EDM 310 and how they can be used in the education world.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

Learn to Change, Change to Learn is a very insightful video. In the video, the speaker makes a statement saying education is different. It also says that some kids learn more from multimedia resources that they do from school. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because teachers are not going to know everything. However, teachers would be able to find the answers with the internet very quickly. We should lead by example. Encourage students to do their own research online. It's not all about what is learned inside the classroom. It is also about what is learned outside the classroom.

Scavenger Hunt 2.0

On the website Discovery Education
there are many useful tools for teachers and students alike. One such tool is Animoto. It is a tool designed for creating presentations and, when used correctly, can be very powerful. It comes in three prices ranges. The lite version is free. The plus version is $30 per year or $5 per month. The pro version is $249 per year or $39 per month. Although the prices may appear to be kinda steep, this tool offers a vast variety of ideas and usages.
Another way Animoto can be used is for its video features. One feature that it has is easy sharing. Animoto can quickly upload videos to sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and twitter. Another feature is that it has the ability to incorporate music into videos making them more enjoyable. Also, videos can be viewed in high definition giving them a greater impact. Animoto has many more features that can be used making it an even more powerful tool.
Another tool I found on the Discovery Education website was Edmodo.com. It is a social website for students and teachers. I found this as a healthy way for students and teachers to keep in contact outside the classrooms and also work on assignments. One way I could use this in my classroom is to have online homework and quizzes done and submitted to this site. That way I could quickly examine and provide students feedback and also answer any questions or clear misunderstandings in a short amount of time.