My Ridiculous Recorded Voice

3 Stories I'd Never Put In My Autobiography

I really liked Animoto. It is incredibly easy to use and does not require that much work to make a cool looking slideshow to tell your story. I like that all you need to do is upload some pictures and a song to play over them. The only bad thing about Animoto is that you cannot really explain what's going on so you need to have obviously descriptive photos. In mine, you know it's about the 85 Bears because of the title, but as someone who knows nothing of football, you wouldn't be able to tell that they were the greatest team the NFL has ever seen, who each photo is of, and what the significance of each on is. But on the whole, I'll take this over the other two because of the incredible ease of use and lack of editing involved.

Scrapblog is the worst of the three. This is only because of the fact that you have to do everything yourself, i.e. backgrounds, borders, fonts, colors, angles, opaqueness, etc. For telling a couple minute story like we are, this is just too much work to put in compared to how much you get out of it. If I were making a scrapbook about a trip I just took on the other hand, Scrapblog would be by far the best because you can put everything on one slideshow, allow each viewer to advance at their own pace, and add descriptions of what's on each page. And as I said earlier, you can choose of everything will look, just like you would if you were making a real scrapbook. Overall though, Scrapbook just isn't good enough to make the 1-2 minute story we're telling in this assignment.

VoiceThread is pretty cool. I like how it's simple like Animoto and how you can add descriptions like Scrapblog. The only problem I had what that I forgot to make it public right away and couldn't figure out how to change it after it had been created. So I remade it, and it only took me a couple minutes because of the ease of use. Also, if I had a microphone, my story would be even better because you could hear it. People like listening a lot more than reading. In the future, this would be the one that I would use most often because it combines the best parts of Animoto and Scrapblog.

The New Loop

PBS Frontline's special Growing Up Online, which can be found via this link, documents how today's kids are using the internet, what they are doing on it, and what their parents are doing (or not doing) in response. It outlines several kids and parents from a New Jersey town, including a Goth model, the head of the PTA and her family, a guy who is never unplugged, a girl with an eating disorder, a cyber bulliee, and several other local teens who discuss why they use what they use. Every on interviewed said that they use the internet all the time simply because everybody else uses it and they do not want to be left out of the social loop. All the parents all have the same concerns about their children's usage. They worry about predators, and although none of them say it, but I'm sure they do worry about it, is that colleges and future employers can easily see all that their children post online. However, the teenagers quickly dispell these by admitting that 1) they know how to tell if there is unwanted attention and 2) they can easily delete all problematic media from their accounts. The teenagers' biggest problem with using the internet is when their parents view their profiles because they see this as an invasion of privacy. The one thing that parents never really mention as a concern is cyber bullying. It is sad that the only one who does is the father of a bulliee who killed himself when he was 13.

On the whole, I think that the internet has had a positive impact on kids. They are free to express themselves in ways they weren't able to before. They can easily keep in touch with friends. School work becomes somewhat easier thanks to online study guides and quick reference encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. However, it gives them access to things they should not see, such as the anorexic girl finding pages with tips on how to stay true to Ana and the bulliee who found pages on how best kill himself and how to tie the noose. It can also creates a sedentary lifestyle because all the kids do when at home is mainly sit down and stare at a screen. Also, as the video points out, it completely changes the way we teach because they have shorter attention spans and teachers become entertainers mainly instead of expanders of knowledge. But I feel that the positives outweigh the negatives on this topic.

I do not really worry about how much kids use the internet. The only area where I do worry is cyber bullying. Unlike classical bullying, there is no face to face contact so there's not really any way to see it happening or tell if someone is the subject to it, unless a parent it told or it is too late. But they are smart enough and mature enough to know where to draw the line in pretty much every other area. They're not like your average 5 year old who blindly follows anyone with candy. They know how to be safe from harm.

$35ucks for Gr$50des

Blogs I read:
http://ci335edtech.blogspot.com/
http://rachelsedreflections.blogspot.com/
http://johnlundy.blogspot.com/

I chose these three blogs to respond to because they all present different opinions program presented in the Chicago Tribune article. We have the supporter (Melissa), the detractor (Rachel), and the not sure yet-er (John).

In Melissa's blog, she talks about how she loves the idea of giving positive reinforcement to students who perform well in school. By giving non-tax payer money to students who get high grades, they will want to get good grades. By only getting half up front and the other half after they graduate, they will want to keep up in school so they can get all of their hard earned cash. She also believes that this program will make students more attentive and motivated in the classroom, thus making the teachers' jobs easier. Melissa also suggests that they can improve the program by having local banks offer incentives to students to save their money. This would then give students the desire to do well in school and graduate as well as teach them good monetary skills.

Rachel doesn't see this through such glass-half-full eyes. She brings up several good points critiquing the program. First, she talks about how the students could quite possibly spend the money on less fruitful things, i.e. drugs, alcohol, and guns. Next, Rachel discusses how the money would be better served by giving it to the school rather than the students. By doing so, they can improve the environment for all students and thus improving the education for all students and easing teachers' lives at school. Lastly, she brings up that this program isn't the answer. What is needed is a change of attitude. That way students would want to learn for learning's sake and would give them good work ethics for the rest of their lives.

John essentially combined these two arguments to express his views. He likes how this program will increase students' motivation for school but could decrease it intrinsic motivation down the line. He likes how the program makes grades rise but not that it could make grades fall once incentives are taken away. John remains skeptical. He would like to see the effects of this program on students once they have been out of high school or college for a few years.

As for me, my position closely resembles John's. I think this program could work, but, like most things, probably won't turn out like how it's planned. I would like to see more statistics first on what/how students do once the program is over. If studies show that students continue their strong work ethic once they finish high school, then I'll hop aboard the bandwagon.

The principle of this program, however, is the important part. Teachers should use positive reinforcement in one way or another in their classroom to help motivate students when their intrinsic motivation is lacking. When I get my own classroom in a couple years, I plan on doing this. How exactly I implement this is still up in the air. I haven't figured it out yet. In the meantime, I'll just wish that my parents offered me this when I was younger.

The Times They Are a-Changin'

In these videos, we are given many facts about students both in K-12 and college-aged. While the majority of the facts presented are shocking and a bit depressing, they're not completely along the lines of, "Holy crap no way!" Like the guy in the first video, I have often bought books that cost hundreds of dollars only to have them sit on my shelves. I have also brought my computer to a lecture hall only to read ESPN and check email and Facebook. Along with all the other statistics brought up in this video, while saddening, don't exactly pertain to my future as a secondary school math teacher. These are all about college students and that goes beyond my future jurisdiction. The second video on the other hand is much more thought provoking. It tells us facts about how much technology students use when they're not in school: playing video games for three and a half hours a week, watching tv for sixteen and a half hours a week, and five and half hours a week on the computer. Yet in the classroom, their teachers don't use different technology, let along understand how to use it.

So obviously I should, and will, use technology in my classroom. By doing so, I will be able to connect better with my students, and as a result will allow my students to learn better. Also, using technology will keep my students engaged and excited to be in class everyday. What is unfortunate is that the majority of teachers don't or won't do this simply because they do not know how to do so. Teachers need to be their own agent of change. They need to be aware of how things are changing and adapt to that for the betterment of their students. By doing so, teachers will meet their students' expectations and allow them to learn better.

A Response

Other blogs I read:

http://angeladodge.blogspot.com/

http://jzhang7.blogspot.com/

http://ryebread1414.wordpress.com/

As my fellow classmates have so excellently described in their blogs, Ken Robinson explains how modern schools are destroying the creativity of our children. Thanks to recent educational policies and the focus on right/wrong (and nothing in between), our schools have limited kids' learning to the "important" subjects: math, science, english, etc. But why can't music, art, or dance be important too? For many people out there those are what interests them the most and it is what they're best at. Is it fair that schools take away their best subjects because those aren't the "mainstream" ones? I'm willing to say we've all known people who didn't take those fine arts class because they feared not doing well in them so it would hinder their GPA and class rankings. One the flip side, I knew countless people who did not want to answer questions in class because of the fear of being wrong. This, quite frankly, seems stupid because we always hear those quotes that are along the lines of, "You can only learn by making mistakes." So why are we making our students afraid to learn?

Like everybody else has said, I don't want to be like that when I am teaching. I need to not put the importance on being right all the time, but on the process of getting an answer. Students need to know that it's ok to make mistakes, but not ok to not try. Students also need to know that math and science and english aren't everything. They should explore the "less important" subjects; not only because it will make them a more well-rounded person, but also that they could find what they are truely passionate about which could lead to them finding a job they love and contributing to society. Isn't that the purpose of school anyway?

Teachers' Choice

Should teachers be required to use technology in the classroom?  I think that they should have to use technology when teaching, but they should have the choice as to how much they use it.  You want to use it enough so students are comfortable with using computers and calculators in the future but you don't want to make them dependent on them.  Unfortunately, most schools today drill the use of the calculator into students so they aren't able to do any sort of basic mathematical skill without it.  I'm sure we've all had experiences while tutoring where the students needs to do something simple such as 8+4 or 15/5 and immediately reach for the calculator.  We can't continue to have that.  You need to find that happy medium so our students are technologically sound but not dependent upon it.

Welcome to Brad Thoughts

For those of you who don't know or have forgotten, my name is Brad.  I'm currently a junior at the University of Illinois.  I am an alum of John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, IL.  I want to teach high school math once I graduate.  Unlike most others, I have only realized I wanted to teach after I started college.  The reasons I'd like to do so is because I can't imagine what else I'd do and I enjoy doing it.  Makes sense, right?  And that's the reason I'm here writing this:  it's for one of my education classes.  Things I enjoy include the Cubs, the Blackhawks, and listening to music. Thanks for stopping by.