Hooray Technology!

Add a Comment

Comment by Harvey Almarode on November 28, 2007 at 10:48am

I enjoyed the video very much! Thanks for posting! I agree with your comments and I might add that it seems like education is the last place to embrace the newer technologies and that we certainly, as educators in the College of Education, need to make our students aware of the ever changing possibilities available for use in the classrooms of tomorrow.

Comment by Pavel Zemliansky on October 5, 2007 at 7:26am

David, I support everything you say above.

Also, I am getting more responses from students, and some are quite puzzling. For example, there have been calls for "regulations" in the use of technology in education. Gee, I think we already have too many of those. There were also calls to basically reducing the use of technology to allowing Googling instead of libraries and Wikipedia instead of other sources. Could the students be missing the point here because the intended audience is teachers?

Comment by Dr. David A. Slykhuis on October 2, 2007 at 1:04pm

I showed this video in my science methods class, and their first reaction also was, what about those that don't have cell phones, etc? This video showed that the majority do have access, but public education is not about education the majority, but educating all!

That being said, it still is a great motivation to try and incorporate technologies that are becoming ubiquitous everywhere but the classroom.

Comment by Pavel Zemliansky on October 2, 2007 at 11:25am

David,
I found this video on Youtube and posted it to the website of my GWRIT 103 class.

Here is one interesting comment, which I share here anonymously:

This video shows some interesting ideas when it comes to teaching methods. However, I will have to say I disagree with a lot of the ideas shown. The fact that students play videogames, watch T.V, go on the computer, and playing with cellphones is due to the fact those are "fun" activities for the younger generation. If one begins making those items part of the academic world, they are no longer going to be enjoyable, and students are going to loose interest in them. The "richness" one gets out of school, and classes is different for every individual. Not all students don't listen, or don't ask a question in 10 hours. Every student is different and learns a different way, not all students would enjoy using their cellphones as assignments and things like that, it takes away from that fact that a cellphone has nothing to do with leaning in school, aka why its enjoyable to text/talk on it.
Technology is not reliable, and can be expensive. Some may not be able to afford a cellphone with all the fancy features, or computers and videogames. School is already expensive as it is think if one of the requirements is to also pay a phonebill, and have a fancy phone? Many struggle to afford college as it is, thats not fair to those students. Its all about the individual student and how willing they are to do the work. The video asked "what did students do before google?" Just because students use google a lot doesn't mean if it wasn't there they wouldn't know what to do. Technology is unrealiable and what happens if your computer crashes and you need to do research, a student would go to books. Its not that they don't know how to use books it all about whats faster and more effecient. (spelling of the author preserved).

Just to add the perspective of one student who, for some reason, think we are calling for the replacement of books with computers. What is also interesting, though, is that this student posted a response on a class blog without me, the teacher, asking for one directly. Does this mean that this student is amenable to the kinds of learning the video discusses without realizing it?
Pavel.

Comment by Richard Clemens on October 1, 2007 at 11:29am

David, thanks for sharing the video. Certainly encourages us to consider more fully the use of these technologies for learning.

There was a couple of screens that talked about bringing "Richness" to your classes... hum most times that happens in classes that I facilitate - other times I may not be fully "there"!