Blog Post #5

Dr. Scott McLeod
He is the Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky, as well as, the Founding Director of UCEA CASTLE.Dangerously Irrelevant, is a blog created by him. I really like the approach he uses in his blog post, Don't teach your kids this stuff.a Please? This post is directed to parents, teachers, administrators and board members regarding children and their use of technology. I also really liked the sentence form he chose to use, it is very unique way to help get his point across. This style makes its fun and interesting.

Well I agree with every argument that is made in his blog post. You would first think by reading it that he is totally against technology, but once you catch on you will realize he is using sarcasm as his way of getting his main points across to the people. Yes, there are certain risk that come along with the use of technology, but we as parents and educators have to teach our children the responsible use of technology. Technology is a big part of today's world and it will be very beneficial for us to help our children become more advanced in the technology world.As teachers, we have to learn to adapt and grow and always further our learning. Learning is something that should never stop because there always new things being introduced daily. We may graduate and become teachers, but that does not mean that we are done and that we have learned everything we need to know.
Dangerously Irrelevant


Travis Allen
In 2009, Travis Allen was a 17 year old high school student who created a youtube video call "iSchool Initiative" showing his solution on fixing the United States educational problems.He was showing a way for everyone to save time and money, but still have access to all the students work and basically everything related to the school. He proposed the idea for every student to own and use the iPod Touch interface system in place of books, pens, calculators, planners & other school materials. If schools did switch to this system they could be saving about $500 per student. This would allow more money to be put back into the system. This could also help with being able to hire more teachers and keeping them, instead of having lay offs.
He also had another small clip on mobile learning as well called ZeitgeistYoungMind's Entry

I think that he has some brilliant ideas and I really hope our school system takes advantage of his information. I think his ideas would really help better our system systems and make a dramatic difference in the educational field. I have noticed that some school are trying to switch and started introducing the IPads and MacBooks to their students. I really look forward to our educational system becoming more advanced due to the wonderful ideas of Travis Allen.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir
Eric Whitacre is a very well-known composer and public speaker. He gave an amazing performance in "Lux Aurumque" , which is a virtual choir performance. This choir consists of 185 singers from 12 different countries. This performance is absolutely amazing. I was totally blown away by their soft voices. This just made me relax and let my mind take a break and wander away. It was a total mind blower on how did this guy manage to put such a video together. How on Earth did he come up with such an idea? I can not even begin to imagine all the time and planning that had to go into creating this. Technology and internet are amazing and with them your possibilities are never ending. You can basically do anything and go everywhere. I am very impressed and give this man tons of credit for a spectacular creation.

Teaching in the 21st Century
Kevin Roberts created a video about teaching in the 21st Century. As I watched the video, I thought of the questions being asked and really tried focusing on the main ideas of the video. After finishing the video, I replayed the clip in my head, along with thinking about all the questions that were brought forth. The main one is what does it mean to teach in the 21st century? Well I think that it means as time goes on teaching methods need to change and stay in tune with the time. Like for example, the kids now days would probably be more advanced and taught different then I was when I was a little kid. There are plenty of things taught in school that students will never remember or rarely even use in real life situations outside of the classroom. I think teachers need to step outside the box and really spice things up with students help make things interesting and fun. This will help them remember and carry it with them through out life. I mean I'm 22 and a lot of things I learned in school was not beneficial to me in the real world. I do consider myself to be some what smart and know a pretty good bit about things, but it came from hands on activities and just getting out there and actually learning the skills I needed that applied to my life. I mean things like cooking, cleaning, taking care of kids, managing money, paying bills. These are things that apply to real life circumstances. teachers need to stand out and create assignments that really mean something and strikes interest with the students. Most things in life are not learned by reading it, they are done by actually doing them. Hands on learning is one of the best tools I think to actually help benefit the youth.

Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets is a website that has researched resources on the things that works for children that will help out the parents and educators. I am a mom to an infant right now, but I am glad to know about all the information and resources available for me when my daughter becomes old enough to read. These resources can really help me improve her reading skills and really benefit her learning. I can not wait to be able to use this information with my daughter. For now though, these resources are things I can introduce to my nieces and really help improve their skills and help make them better readers.

Looking at this website through a teacher's point of view, I really like the reading topics A-Z They list all the resources in alphabetically order, which is very helpful. They have resources on reading all the way to resources on writing. This particular site also has links to different videos and even podcast so the students can go more in depth with their learning.I think this is an excellent way to make reading fun and interesting. It is always a great think when you can actually get a visual of what you are reading. You always have to make connections when reading. As a teacher, I would want to help get parents involved and make them aware of these websites and resources, so they can also help their children out at home.