January 24, 2010

I just watched the first video we were told to watch: A Vision of Students today, I'm not sure what to think about it. It amazes me that we college students somehow manage to fit 26 and 1/2 hours into 24 hours. I just have to sit here and wrap my mind around that. I mean, if I think about it I guess it makes sense, with all the studying, jobs, social activities, classes, and even our web world students now days really are filled with activities. Everyday, college freshmen students enter the classrooms having no idea what to expect because in high school they did not have to cram everything into one day. It is no wonder half of every college's freshman class fail out every year.
This video only brings questions to my mind. How are we supposed to manage our time wisely? Where do we go for help with it? and the big one... How in the world do people do all of the activities (social, physical, relationships, and school) and manage to make straight A's?

I just had the privilege of reading Kelly Hines's blog(http://tinyurl.com/ydkng3l) about how teachers must be up to date with technology in order to be effective teachers. I agree with Mrs. Hines's, teachers must know how their students learn and in order to know this they must be able to operate the technology in his or her classes better than his or her students.
I completely agree with Mrs. Hines's list of four things teachers must be and do in order to be effective teachers. The one thing on her list that I agree with the most is that "Teachers must be learners." How can we, as teachers, expect students to learn if we are not willing to learn neew things ourselves? I can't recall how many times that I lost respect or admiration for a teacher because he or she was unwilling to help me learn or understand something better.

Is it OK to be Technologically Illiterate?
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Fisch. How can we expect students to excel in school and in the working world if we are unwilling to learn how to use technology and teach them how to use it? Teachers, unintentionally, narrow the jobs that students are able to get when they leave schools.
Teachers do have a lot on their plate, but it is our job to teach these students everything they will need in the world around them. If teachers are unwilling to learn new things, how can we expect students to want to learn the new things we must teach them?

Social Media Count
How weird is it that in only an hour or two the count from 0 to like 4,000 blogs and Facebook posts? I think that this will effect my teaching career drastically with the level of difficulty of keeping students' attention. I can only imagine how hard and frustrating it will be for me as a teacher when the technology becomes so advanced that I will not be able to tell when my students are texting or paying attention. It's a little overwhelming and a tad scary, to think that probably half of those numbers are children half my age knowing how to tweet, post blogs, buy things through Facebook and iPhones when I can't even grasp the concept of tweeting much less figure out how to buy things online without someone stealing my ID.