Week 11

I never thought that an iPod was used for more reasons than downloading your favorite songs and watching your favorite movies. It has also become a popular device for ways to make working out go by faster, that is what I use my iPod for. But unbeknownst to me it is used in classrooms.
I found an article where teachers in Zambia are using iPods to enhance training in studies like mathmatics, science, and english. EDC distributed twelve iPods to teachers who teach sixth grade. They show videos and explain in detail concepts in the three subjects. The teachers either have a solar powered generator or a foot powered genrator. When the school year ends in November they will evaluate the effectiveness of the iPod by measuring teacher performance. If the experiment worked out well the staff plans to distribute the idea to more schools across the country.
In my opinion I think it would be better used for adults in continuing education. It seems to me that college students would take advantage of the iPod and not use the device the way it is suppose to. Concerning the experiment in Zambia I think it was a great idea and I hope every teacher benfited from the project, after all an iPod is nothing but a hand held laptop.

Week 10

Dr Chrisite's site is a great one to remember once you have your own classroom. When I entered the website it talks a little bit about her being an educator for forty years, and how she wants other educators to incorporate more technology in the classroom, which I thought to myself was very strange coming from a teacher of forty years and not learning to teach with things such as computers; most older teachers do not like to change their methods, but this educator does. When I started looking around I saw her photograpy link. Since most technology may be a little complicated to teach to a seven year old in elementary school I thought it would be fun to let them take pictures and share them with their classmates. Since nature is a great thing to photograph I think letting students photograph what they want in nature will help a teacher understand what a student loves about nature. Her website includes pictures she has taken. It would also be fun for the students to take their own pictures and then enhance it digitially or make a color picture black and white. Photography is a great way children can remember things as well for when it comes to test time.

Week 9

The articles written about Wikipedia are astonishing. It seems as though the internet is becoming less and less trustworthy. Even though the articles said that most of the people can be tracked down by seeing what computer it came from, it is still sad that companies never want the public to know the truth. I do not think this website should ever be trusted again, why trust something when it is apparently so easy to hack into and change? It seems as though people do not care about other people anymore, will the truth ever be told in todays society? I think the website should now be known to schools and students that this is an unreliable resource.

Week 8

When looking for a blog to write about from the Fischbowl, I found this one from the best of 2007, "Is it English as a Second Language World?" I found this article interesting because I always knew that English was a taking a back seat to Spanish, but I never considered any other languages. In this article it says that 50 years ago English was the number one spoken language, except for Mandarin. In just a short amont of time, less than a lifetime, things have changed immensly. Today there are more Spanish and Hindu speakers than English combined! They are now predicting English to fall into fifth place for first languages by the middle of this century, behind Arabic. What would happen if English became an obsolete language? It is not something that could happen anytime soon, but it seems the way things are going it may lead to that one day.
Reading this article made me wonder how teaching English is schools may one day change. Slang is something that it seems to me is changing the language more and more everyday. How do we teach our kids to communicate with the rest of the world? Things are ever changing and how we speak and teach English may change one day as well. He also talks about in his blog native English speakers to non-native English speakers. He says in the article, “the majority of encounters in English today take place between non-native speakers”, and he follows with saying, “relief at the absence of native speakers is common.” Why is that that non native speakers do not like dealing with native English speakers? He also says in the article how he wonders if native speakers will have to soon conform to non native speakers. It is a really good question to ask oneself, it makes me also wonder what is our language going to be like in another 50 years.

Week 7

I think it is very important for teachers to understand technology and computers. The way our society is running today it seems as though a good computer comes out today and a much better computer comes out the next day! Our technology is growing by leaps and bounds and to not understand what we have to offer today means tomorrow that person is going to be behind even more. Students are now being born into a world full of technology a teacher must understand what it is about. While reading the passage I saw this sentence that really brings this idea home, "if a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write."
When I first graduated high school and deciding on a college to go to my grandparents told me that I would not have to go to college that I would make a great living on a high school diploma. Even though I knew this statement was not true, I came to realize how different times were when they were growing up. In my grandparents time school was not a major requirement only knowing how to read and write was good enough to get you a good job. In my parents time it was good enough to get through high school and maybe even a technical school. In todays time you must get through high school as well as college to even be considered for a job. My point to all this is times have changed, more ideas are being brought to the table and more ways of getting the job done. Students must know computers and the only way they can learn is through teachers.
Technology is taking over and people have to keep up if they want to stay with the work force and society. So my point to this whole blog is that teachers must understand technology, not just those fresh out of college, we need our older and more experienced teachers to stay in the game. The world is not changing and getting better, we need our teachers to do the same.