Blog Assignment 5

 Scott Mcleod is a professor at the Univeristy of Kentucky. He is also the director of CASTLE, which is the nations only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators. Don’t Teach Your Kids This Stuff Please is a blog post published by Scott Mcleod. Mcleod’s blog post was very sarcastic. He is explaining that we should not allow students to use technology because it is negative in many ways. Sarcastically he is saying that technology can benefit our students regardless of the negative things that it may portray. I completely agree with Mcleod’s blog post I believe as teacher we need to balance the traditional classroom with technology. We should not strongly depend on one or the other. As teachers we need to teach our students the positive things about the internet and how they must use it to their advantage.

The iSchool Initiative is a video done by Travis Allen when he was a student in high school. He was proposing that a program named ischool should be used in all schools. This program would be used by both teachers and students. It would cut back the cost of supplies purchased by the schools. The ischool would replace the things that former teachers would struggle with. Calculators, globes, and papers would no longer need to be provided for students physically.

 I was actually amazed by this video. With Travis being a young student in high school his proposal was mature. I believe if all schools took action with this it would tremendously benefit both teachers and students. The cost of materials has been a major problem in our school systems. With this proposal schools could bundle the cost every year.

Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir video was outstanding. The use of internet in this production was beyond amazing. Below the video states that these people never met or practiced this in person. The choir sung this entire song via internet. I have honeslty never realized how we can accomplish so many things over the internet with ever meeting in person.

Teaching in the 21^st Century was transformed into a video by Kevin Roberts. Kevin Roberts is displaying how different it will be to teach in the 21^st century compared to before. Technology has changed dramatically, which means our teaching skill should do the same. The use of technology will strongly be in affect over a matter of time. As instructors, we must be up to date with the latest technology to teach to our students. We may need to change our teaching strategies. Catching a student’s attention in the future will be far more difficult. Students will be able to depend on internet research to answer most of their questions. Teachers will need to change their approach to remain as the “educator”.

The Reading Rockets website is full of all types of resources for reading. It has tabs for teachers, parents, librarians, and principals. The site has links that can help with most reading problems. It also has links for classroom strategies. I believe this can be helpful for teachers in many ways. There are many students with reading problems, with this site we can go and find different ways to help our students. There are videos, books, and guides that can all be reviewed on the site.

The site would help with a place for parents to look and also try to solve reading problems. Teachers can refer parents to this site for further help at home. It has definitions to explain certain reading problems that parents may not understand. The principals and librarians also have a tab located, which can help the students school wide.