Blog Assignment #8

This is How We Dream

Dr. Richard E. Miller has a 2 part series in which he titles, "This is How We Dream". In the first part of his series, This is How We Dream, Miller stated, "I think we are living at the moment of the greatest change in human communication in human history". That statement covered a multitude of what he discusses in this video. He talks about how he grew up, like most of us, reading, writing, teaching and being taught with verbal communication and written texts. He then discusses the transition that he made and how much easier it is to access for people in all aspects of the teaching-learning atmosphere.

In the 2nd part of his series Miller begins to discuss exactly what areas have been made easier. He talks about how lectures from college professors are now available on iTunes, how newspapers are available on the internet, and several other factors of the educational spectrum. He also mentions how fast people gain access via the internet versus written text. Miller says, "People are beginning to understand that ideas don't belong to us individually, but to us as a culture, and we, as educators, must be in the business of sharing ideas freely."

The statement mentioned previously really stuck out to me. In today's society, people become so stingy with their ideas. The whole world could be so much more educated if everyone shared all that they knew. I believe that the world is slowly realizing this and beginning to evolve into a generation that cooperates educationally with each other. I will leave you with this last quote stated by Dr. Miller, "The limits and restrictions are largely ones that we place among ourselves."

Carly's YouTube Playlist Assignment

From what I understand after reading Carly's Blog Post #12 assignment we will have to create our own assignment. Carly had a fantastic idea! She was very creative with her idea. (I also have to commend Carly on her writing skills. She is a great writer; very creative, fun, interesting, and the whole shebang!)

Her idea was for each student to create his or her own playlist of YouTube videos based on 10 topics that she gave us to follow. From the 10 that she gave us, we were to choose 5, and base the videos from the ones chosen.

This project/assignment is very creative, but mostly useful! It is a great resource to refer back to whenever you're having a bad day or you get down (and as teachers, we all know that is going to happen). Kudos to Carly!

EDM 310 is Different

The video, EDM 310 For Dummies explains how frustration can easily take over all of your efforts in being successful in the class. In the beginning of the video two girls are very aggravated because they do not seem to understand many of the assignments. They purchase the book, EDM 310 for Dummies, and after some reading and a little bit of time everything becomes much easier to them, and that makes the girls more motivated to keep working at it.

In the video, The Chipper Series, a student named Chipper confronts Dr. Strange with several issues she has in his course, EDM 310. She is trying to talk Dr. Strange into extending the deadline multiple times due to her procrastination. Secondly, she confronts him about him not teaching the course. She then, decides to drop out of school because things are getting too difficult for her. Her new idea is to attend Timeline Pilot School. When the pilot school does not work out for Chipper, she becomes a teacher and gets fired for not showing up. Chipper continues to try out several different jobs, but ends up getting fired or quitting because the work load is just too much for her to handle. At the end of the video, Chipper comes to the realization that she has to work for anything that she wants to be successful in and decides to go back to school and complete her degree. Chipper understands that if she would have just stuck it out and pushed herself to begin with, then she wouldn't have wasted all of the time that she did and would already have her degree.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

In the video, Learn to Change, Change to Learn, educators are discussing the importance of technology in this new generation's society. The way that students learn today have been changing and will continue to keep changing. These teachers are encouraging us, as future educators, to allow ourselves to accept the transformation of technology in today's society.

I could not agree more with this video. It is our job, as teachers, to get on our students' levels. We are responsible for their education, so we must respond to their needs in a way that they understand it.

Scavenger Hunt 2.0

This assignment was suggested by Justin Cometti in the fall semester of 2011 in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. Like mentioned previously in this post, he also had to come up with an assignment, like Carly's. Justin came up with the Scavenger Hunt 2.0 . In this assignment, we were given 5 things to look for, but were to only choose 3 assignments to do on our post.

I first, located Edmodo.com . It is a website that is much like Twitter or Facebook, but for students and teachers to interact with one another. This is a great tool for the classroom. It is a space where students and teachers can communicate back and forth. It is especially useful for parents, too. The parents will be able to see some, if not most, of the work performed by their children online.

I created a poll at Polleverywhere.com. http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/LTE2NzAwNTAxNjQ

I also created my very own comic strip at Makebeliefscomix.com.