Blog Post 8

Dr. Richard E. Miller Discusses Writing with Multimedia

In this video, Dr. Richard E. Miller begins by talking about the traditional methods of writing and research, by using books to help one in writing more books. That said, he mentions that academic books have begun to go out of style and out of print as we now move towards the use of computers to research and write. The beauty of this is that we have access to a huge amount of information all concentrated in one place (the Internet).

He also states that a lot of academic publishing has moved towards being available both as print and as an online document. He then begins to speak on the ability of collaboration available by use of the internet. We can use images, sound, and video all in one document to help us further the points that we want our students to learn. By using multimedia presentations, we can incorporate both information from the internet and information collected from sources around us.

In Part 2, he begins to speak of another advantage of online information: information can be changed and edited and presented at any time, right before our eyes. He states that educators should be glad to share information freely to help others learn. We can use given information to help us more effectively teach and share the same information in different ways with other people. He makes the interesting statement that many of the limitations that are given with said software and techniques are placed on us by ourselves. He briefly speaks on the power of YouTube to distribute and share information quickly, versus a print document which often takes a lengthy amount of time to publish.

I agree with Dr. Miller in that multimedia presentations will soon become a crucial part of the classroom and will be frequently used by classrooms to help students present information effectively in both the classroom and in future jobs. I also agree with his shock that some people are completely uninterested in these excellent resrouces for education. Many people simply feel that the "old style" paper and pencil are the best way - and where they may be entitled to their opinions, they should also make room for the inevitable future where technology will be crucial to success.

Carly Pugh's Blog Post

In Carly's blog post where she was assigned to create an assignment, she asked students to make a YouTube playlist containing videos on various aspects of being a teacher, such as classroom management, motivation, and ways to improve education, for a total of at least ten videos. She gave one she made on her own as an example for those doing the assignments.

Carly then goes on to speak about some basic, yet important ideas to promote in one's classroom - such as trying new things, embracing diversity, accepting everyone, and creativity. She also gives some videos about student teaching and other basic classroom skills. She concludes by saying that we as teachers need to move towards allowing students to find and research materials as opposed to simply placing and assigning things right in front of their faces.

I think this assignment would have been very interesting had we been required to do it and would have helped us gain much valuable insight for being a teacher. As I've stated in past posts, I think the idea of having students find their own information is fantastic, because it uses higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy and thus has been proven to help children learn more effectively.

EDM 310 is Different

The first thing I will note: It is completely different to watch these movies now as opposed to when I first started in this class! When I watched them in August, I remembered thinking that there was no way this class required THAT much time, and that this was just being hyped up to make us work harder.

Boy, was I wrong! You truly have to put a lot of effort into this class and be willing to think and learn, as is the message of both videos. These videos have a witty, sarcastic way of explaining that this class requires quite a bit of dedication to come out of with a passing grade.

If I was to make a video like this, I would probably MAJORLY emphasize the time requirements. Students cannot come into this class thinking they will simply fly through it - any attempt to do so will either fail or result in a not-so-nice grade.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

This video opens with a staggering statistic: Education was ranked #55 in a list of areas that are IT intensive in the United States. Out of 55. Wow! We have a lot to learn, apparently. This video shows many well-known educators discussing the state of education and the way we learn. I love that one teacher points out how our most current forms of technology, cell phones, texting, and social networking, are banned from the classroom. What irony! Shouldn't we be learning to use the resources available to us?

As many other videos we've watched have said, technology is no longer an optional part of an educational setting. We are, as a society, so engrossed in technology that we cannot simply ignore it as educators. Some teachers make a point that students use cell phones and technology out of class so often that they could be a wonderful additional resource in the classroom itself. We must equip teachers with the technology needed to change the classrooms, and the classrooms will change.