Using video to teach

The presentation by Scott Hacke was very thought provoking. The level of creativity shown in the video clips was quite impressive. Given the proper equipment, time, and guidance, students can express themselves exceptionally well. A concern I would have is that, while providing an outlet for a student's creativity, the intentional teaching of specific language arts standards would have to be carefully and intentionally planned. in other words, bridging the "wow, cool" and "meaningful instruction and learning" gap. The vast majority of these students would not be submitting their work for san award, but ALL should learn important concepts applicable to state standards. In fact, the video project would offer an amazing opportunity to teach multiple subject areas...language arts, science, social studies, math, as well as the creative arts.

Response to Ted Video:Sugata Mitra

The speaker first talks about remoteness and the quality of education. The finding was that the more remote (in terms of distance from an urban area , OR the isolation within an urban area based on poverty), the lower the achievement on standardized tests. This is rather predictable, but the surprise here was the correlation between the desire of the teacher to be in the school or not. Teachers wanting to be elsewhere had students with poorer results.

The exploration of whether educational technology would improve the education of the students was interesting. Given the opportunity to interact with a computer and touchpad without instructions, a number of children were obviously intrigued enough to try and eventually learned a modicum of things from their interaction.

The lessons are these:

From Arthur C. Clarke, the quote "Any teacher who can be replaced by a machine should be".

A teacher commited to their post and their charges will be more successful.

Educational technology can be extremely motivating and effective in translating human curiousity into educational learning.

Putting educational technology in the hands of enthusiastic, commited teachers will result in greater student achievement than might be expected otherwise.

Technology: What I like and dislike

Technology

There are some things I appreciate and some things I don't. Technology has allowed me to save a great deal of paperwork as I have learned to trust saving things electronically. It has also opened an amazing opportunity for research and saved massive amounts of time. Certain applications are really quite impressive: data storage and access, creating maps, the ability to make phone calls virtually any place and at any time. And one of the best uses of all has got to be the digital camera. The ability to take and save some 500 pictures and store them on a small disk costing about $20 is amazing. In the film days, a roll of film for 24 pictures would cost about $20 to purchase and have developed....and there may only be 4 or 5 good pictures on the roll! Great invention.

On the other hand, technology can be very frustrating. Many applications are based on typing in data. Not being able to type well means it takes much longer to record information when compared to wwriting. Once the data is input, it may be more efficient, but I often asl myself if the time commitment is worth it. Also, technology often doesn't work exactly as advertised. The voice recognition on cell phones for example, has been less than advertised and causes undue frustration. Finally, dependance on technology leads to the disappointment in the inevitably failure that occurs from time to time.

Technology has it's benefits and pitfalls, and sometimes I'm glad to have it, other times, I'm not.