Blog Post #2

Vicki Davis: Harness Your Student's Digital Smarts

Vicki Davis, and IT instructor, teaches her classes in a different way from most other teachers. She believes that teachers need to learn along with their students and that the students need to be able to explore and learn on their own as well. She pushes them to think on a higher level than most students have to and as a result when they are given material to learn the thrive in this environment. I thought that this setting style was extremely awesome, and I feel as though her students learn and take with them a lot, not just the "important stuff".

  A Vision for 21st Century Learning

 In this video the main argument is that the passive teaching style is not the style that needs to be used. They suggest that books and lecture are in the past and that technology needs to push its way through to the front line of learning. While I believe technology is important and that students need to know how to use it, I also believe that you can not form a personal bond with a computer. Teachers do not just teach lessons out of books, they also teach children key life lessons and how to interact with one another. If you replace that with technology then you are left with a generation of socially inept children who can only connect through computers. I happen to love technology; video games, e-books, cell phones, and computers, but I also love talking to people face to face and I think a healthy mixture between the two would make the perfect teaching environment.

 Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity

 In Ken Robinson's video he uses humor to keep his audience tuned in but also to help them understand why creativity is so important. Growing up I was blessed to have a school system that believed in being creative and that opened up many doors for me as I entered different grades. I have always loved writing and art, both which need creativity to strive. Ken Robinson seemed very passionate about this way of creatively teaching and creatively learning, something that I hope to be able to bring into a classroom with me some day. I enjoyed his video and agree completely that creativity is indeed important.


Mr. Winkle Waits

In this video by Matthew Needleman, Rip Van Winkle wakes up after a one hundred year slumber. He is confused to wake up in a world full of technology that he knows not of. He makes his way to a school and is comforted by the sight of a teacher giving a lecture to students just as it was when he was a child. I would most likely feel the same way as Mr. Winkle did, but at the same time I think that this technology should be integrated into the schools. There should be a happy medium between the technology world and the lecture world. In EDM 310 the students are pushed to learn outside what is normally expected, but even though hard at times, this will make us all technologically literate and help in the long run with classroom teaching skills.

Did You Know?


This video was extremely eye opening for me. I knew that the US had the least amount of bilingual citizens, but I did not realize how under educated this country is. When I was in high school I was able to take both spanish and french, but I know of many schools that do not have decent teachers in just a spanish class. I think this video was eye opening and definitely got me thinking about how I need to teach and what I need to work on to prepare myself.