Blog Post 8

Part One




Richard Miller: This Is How We Dream Part 1&2
Richard Miller explains through his blog the importance of technology in school systems and tells of his dream to have a career working with books. He grew up in a home filled with books where he spent his time understanding writing and expressed that he was a "person of boooks". Richard was able to reach his goal of working with books by writing his own book that was placed in libraries around the world and eventually was published on the web for people around the world to have access to.
He expresses the change our world is making through communicating globally and allowing any and all information to become available through the web instead of the library. In his videos he goes through the incremental and fundamental changes made in our working society. Richard states that our overall work stations have went from the "desktop" being a true wooden desk top to now present day the "desktop" being the laptop. The majority of work that evolves in the 21st century is not so much completed through the use of pencil and paper, but rather computer and web based technology.
We live in a majorly digital environment where anyone and everyone is able to update information immediately. People of all ages are able to distribute any and all information globally and freely. With the use of the web, documents after documents are available at any given time for ones use unlike the library. There was once a time when everyone depended on the library and the many books within it to complete assignments and to be able to fulfill their goals; however, in the 21st century the vast amount of people are not utilizing library facilities due to the ease of the web. Instead of students having to go through the trouble of searching for a book that may or may not be in stock at a library, the web allows them to digitally search any information needed for any assignment and is available to their fingertips at any given time.
Richard Miller's videos added to the many sources that have enabled me to see the major importance of the web and multimedia use in our world. As a future teacher, I am so thankful and excited to have all the many technology based resources available to help teach the future leaders of the world. I cannot imagine becoming a teacher without the availability of all the web based resources that are out there for our use. Students of all ages should realize just how lucky they are to have all the resources to help them succeed in life and to allow their education adventures to be more interesting.
Part Two
Carly Pugh's Blog Post #12 really inspired me to become the best teacher I can possibly be. I loved her assignments she suggested Dr. Strange should assign dealing with a YouTube post. I felt that the requirements in Carly's potential assignment enables futures teachers as myself to really think about their importance as a leader for many young individuals. As Carly states in her post, we should all be thinking about our philosophies as teachers and her YouTube assignment enables each future teacher to do just that. By creating a YouTube video that explains what type of teacher you hope to become and ways you can motivate your future students, will extremely help in the process of building your leadership abilities. In Carly's assignment she also required individuals to describe what a good and bad teacher is and to always center your lessons around creativity. I really think that Carly's requested assignment really could help future students in their endeavor to become the best teacher possible.
Part Three
The Chipper Series and EDM 310 for Dummies are both great videos to watch as a student of EDM 310. The Chipper Series video was about a young girl procrastinating in doing her work for EDM 310 and as we all know procrastination is the worse quality to ever have in doing anything, especially in the class EDM 310. This young student thought she would be able to wait until the last minute to complete all her assignments; however, she realized soon that was not the case. Her refusal to become an independent learner caused her to drop out of school. We as students should all allow this video to become an eye opener to just why we should not procrastinate.
In EDM 310 for Dummies I could not help but continually think of myself and think "Wow this video was made for me!" Even though we are nearly half way into the semester of EDM 310, I still find myself lost at times and not knowing what to do next. Dr. Strange's checklist has been a life saver for me throughout the entire semester and without it I feel I would not have been about to stay on task.

Learning to Change, Change to Learn
The fact that education is only ranked #55 is so very disturbing. I feel that this video stresses the importance of school in many ways. The video tells of how technology enables many students to learn outside of the school building; however, that does not mean that school buildings themselves should be taking out of the picture. As the video states, educators should be open for change in the classroom and change to learn. There are so many old school teachers that seem to refuse to allow change in their classrooms. I feel if they were all to watch this video on learning to change, their eyes would be opened to the many benefits change brings in teaching students to become future independent learners.

Part five Scavenger Hunt
In my scavenger hunt I chose to locate and add the tool Edmodo. Edmodo is a social platform similar to facebook or twitter that enables teachers and students to communicate at any given time. I feel as a future teacher this social website would come in very handy as a day to day tool for my students and I. The website would become a great way of translating assignments to and from my students and also become a more efficient way to reach out to parents as well.
As I toured the Web 2.0, I also found a great tool to use as a future teacher. This was a video tool named Animoto that enables you as a teacher or your students to easily upload and share pictures of all kinds to millions of people. It has special features such as the music library and high definition to allow a better quality to your picture.
Creating my very first poll!