In "A Vision of the 21st Century Teacher" video, it begins with a poor quality monogamous voice, which really emphasized how far we have come technologically in the past years. This is the only vocal in the video. A series of "poster teachers" for 21st century learning have signs displaying what makes them exceptional as educators. They incorporate everything from virtual field trips to photography in math. They use things that usually people see is troublesome, like texting, to encourage student communication like answering surveys. Even while watching the man in the video text, I thought "Wow, that's kinda rude..." until he identified its purpose. Another teacher makes a great point about blogging. Her sign says, "On our blog, students speak up...Even the shy ones." This really hit home for me. In elementary school, I was always very shy and dreaded being called on and being unprepared. I would try so hard to make myself invsible, and while I think learning how to communicate in person is very important, it would have helped a lot of I could have practiced communicating with my classmates through a blog rather than just being thrown in the deep end and forced to present myself. Later, the presentation says, "It's not just about technology itself. It's about unleashing the powers that students bring with them in to the classroom." I really liked this one. It's easy for people to think that using technology is about making things easier... which it does, but it's about really swinging wide all of the doors that are closed by the covers of textbooks. While textbooks and worksheets only have a limited number of pages for students to learn from, and teacher's brains only have a limited amount of information to profess, the internet and technology is practically limitless. You can access so many MORE books and MORE brains to get a thorough, multi-diminsional array of knowledge.
The video also says that it's about students being okay with uncertainty. This reminds me of the Sir Ken Robinson video, and how awakened I was by him saying that we are so scared to be wrong we don't create. A world that we don't create and don't imagine is really a failure in my opinion. It is real life to be wrong, and learning from those mistakes makes a much more genuine learning than copying the answer word for word from a book and getting it correct. We as educators are responsible for preparing our students for the future, and by not utilizing this amazing world of technology we are holding them back. It is important to consider as a teacher, what kind of teacher would I want my child to have (if i had one), or what kind of a teacher do I WISH I had? Someone who did more than lecture. Someone who used as many means as they possibly could to educate. Someone who prepared for the future. Someone who teaches AND learns. Teachers are lifelong learners.
"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." John Cotton Dana
This video is one of my favorite and most interesting type of video I have watched since I have been in college. This video showed me a lot. I feel as if I should rarely, if hardly ever, use worksheets in my classroom in this 21st century. There are too many creative and different ways to teach students with hands-on experience or teach to them using technology. I love the idea of technology. Technology as we all know is growing more and more every day. There are so much things you can use when it comes to technology. There are such things as i Pads, iPods, more advanced computers, smart-boards, promethium boards, Elmo's, and so much more. As teachers, we need to show our children tech items and try to help them understand how they work, as well as show them how you can use technology to help you learn. Technology items are also very convenient. As a teacher, you can easily assess your students with technology as well. Technology will be our students future even more than ours at this growing rate. Technology also keeps the students more interest in what you are teaching them, which is also a plus because we want them to gain the information we are teaching them. Also the information they obtain might stay with them longer than any other traditional way of teaching, because they will remember these types of lessons better because it is a virtual experience and hands-on most the time. Again, this video was a great one to watch. It gave me many ideas to expand on. You state, "Someone who did more than lecture. Someone who used as many means as they possibly could to educate. Someone who prepared for the future. Someone who teaches AND learns. Teachers are lifelong learners," which is an excellent choice of words, because it is so very true. Not only can students learn from our lessons we teach them through technology, but we can as teachers learn too!
ReplyDeleteTia Shae O'Neal Moyer