Blog Post #5

The iSchool Innitiative

The iSchool Innitiative by Travis Allen was great. The idea that he came up with about transforming classrooms and learning into a mobile access situation was awesome! Allen thought of every possible idea there was to think of for students and teachers to successfully learn online and also for teachers to be held accountable for their actions and teaching methods. He talked about the availability of practically everything offered in the tangible world being offered all on one simple mobile device. Allen calculated the total cost of everything and it was almost astonishing at the amount of money that the school system would save on.

In Travis Allen's campaign video he's asking for people to support his quest on convincing schools to embrace mobile learning. Although Allen had some great ideas, I did have some concerns. I'll start off by saying that I have not looked into this mobile learning idea other than watching his YouTube video. However, some things that concerned me were about the underpriviliged children who go to school to get a hot meal because sometimes thats the only meal that they will eat. Or the children that are abused or feel trapped at home, that school would be their escape for the day. Will the mobile learning be taught in controlled settings like an auditorium or will the school have to pay thousands of dollars for the rights to use these apps and other gadgets to teach professionally?Besides those concerns, I think that Allen's idea is great! All ideas come with downsides but im sure when all of the kinks of the program are worked out, mobile learning will become a viral sensation all over the world.


The Virtual Choir

Jennifer Chambers's post about Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir was the coolest thing ever! It is amazing how much you can do virtually now. What is even more astonishing is that these people are total strangers. This was a great way to incorporate totally different sounds and pitches to create a sound that was simply beautiful. The use of the internet to incorporate things that are positive like this is awesome! It just confirms my thoughts of how the internet can help improve education for students in classrooms all over the world.




Teaching in the 21st Century

In Kevin Roberts's video Teaching in the 21st Century he talks about what it means to teach in the 21st century. Roberts believes that the most important thing about teaching is not to entertain but to engage students. He explains the differennce by saying that engagment is meaningful, solves problems, and is relevant but to entertain means to pass time, escape from problems and is obsolete. This was the coolest way to break to words down that are used interchangably but both can mean totally different things when it comes to educating students. Roberts believes that teachers are the filters for students. Sure students can get anything they want to know from the internet but who's gonna show them how to validate information or check sources. It is our job as future educators to teach our 21st centurty students how to check these things. We have to show them why wikipedia isn't a reliable source and the proper way to avoid plagerism. It is our job as teachers to educate and assist students with the proper skills of using the internet for educational purposes and safely for social purposes.

After watching this video I realized that he was right. We can no longer be the "Charlie Brown" teacher feeding students information that they probably already know. Our job is becoming the teacher that shows students the capabilities of their knowledge. In the words of Kevin Roberts we have to become the "Engaging teacher" not the entertaining teacher. Becoming an engaging teacher doesn't mean that you can't make learning fun; it means that we have to come uo with ways to teach that are like appetizers for the brain. We have to teach in a way that students can obtain and KEEP information that they can actually use in life.


Concepts of Flipping the Classroom

Dr. Lodge McCammon's idea of flipping the classroom is one that definitely enforces the engaging part of learning. His concept involves students watching podcasts or videos of lessons that their instructors have provided prior to attending class. Katie Gimbar's Why I Flipped My Classroom & Ms. Munafo's Flipping the Classrom are YouTube demonstrations of how these teachers successfully "Flipped" their classrooms. This activity allows students to work at their own pace in learning and understanding the lesson. After they've viewed and practiced the lesson, attending class becomes a review session where the teacher can answer questions and spend most of the class period practicing the lesson.

This is a great way to use the maximum class period time for learning and engaging! This would be a great way to teach my students about the parts of speech and how to create bibliography pages by providing students with activities to practice doing and recognizing these things properly. Flipping my classroom is something that I can definitely considder doing in my classroom some day.