Blog Post #8

Richard Miller This is How We Dream Parts 1 and 2
This video was about using multimedia to write. I had a hard time following him at first because it seemed like he wasn't clear on some of what he was trying to point out. He mentioned that we are now confronting a new type of material. We used to not have so much technology at our fingertips, but now we do and it is always changing. We can see so many things on the internet and see how much energy is put into it. He mentioned that there are people out there that know that our ideas don't belong to us individually but belong to us as a culture and that we as educators need to be in the business of sharing ideas freely.

We can produce alternative versions and distribute that information globally in different ways that may be able to be understood by others in an easier way. We need to get behind the ideas and look at them alternatively. We place limits and restrictions on ourselves. Society doesn't do this, we do it to ourselves. He is describing and educational system that he knows is hard to put together, but he thinks that one day students will be able to write using this type of educational system. Students will compose with digital composing material one day without the use of books. He and his colleague are learning how to use these things.

He thinks that we need to start producing compositions that are beautiful, compelling and pay attention to the auditory detail of the experience. This is something that he says is necessary if we are to argue for the humanities. Within 3 months this publication on youtube got 9,000 views. This is a way to push ideas into our culture. We need this type of composition. He can't imagine doing it himself, but there are people composing with the web itself. They don't use images or the alphabet. Teachers are needed to teach this visual literacy and many teachers aren't ready for this yet. This technology allows us to articulate our dreams and to share them with others. The problem with the humanities is that we can't make our work physical. This technology will change that.

This is something that I am definitely interested in with me being a teacher. I am also an English major so I am excited that someone has taken an interest in writing and taken an interest in making it concrete. This is something that can take off and make learning so much easier for students. Many students aren't gifted in the area of writing and I think that this would make it much easier for them. It puts it in a way that makes it easier for them to understand and easier for them to gather their thoughts.

Blog Post 12 By Carly Pugh
Carly's blog post was about writing while using multimedia. I thought it was genius actually. This is definitely a way for a person to write using their talents in a different way other than just putting words on a page. Carly made a playlist of things that interest her using youtube videos. It was a great way for her to use her mind in a creative way. We need more teachers like this who will allow students to search out their creativity and use it in ways that interest them. I would much rather sit down and write words on a page, but some students aren't able to write as easily as that. I would much rather sit down and read a book, but for others, reading doesn't come as easily as it does for me. This is something that I am looking forward to being able to do with my students one day hopefully.

The Chipper Series 
The Chipper Series was about procrastination. Something that I am really bad about doing. I have had to make myself complete one assignment a day in this class just so that I won't let it add up the last day of the week. Chipper also wanted to be taught so she didn't have to learn. She thought that just because she was paying for her education that he was supposed to just be taught things and not have to do things herself. Next, Chipper drops out of school. She has this great idea that she can't tell Dr. Strange. Her secret is that she opens a timeline pilot school. Students determine how long they want to stay in school. This may sound like a good idea to some students, but in the end I think that it would be a disaster. She then brings in one of her students and they won't give her student a pilot license because she hasn't spent enough time in the classroom. She only spent about a month in the simulator and they said that she needed to spend actual time flying a plane. Then the FAA shuts the timeline down. She has now gotten a degree online and is planning on being a teacher. She asks Dr. Strange if he knows of anywhere that she can apply. He gives her the name of a principal and the principal fires Chipper. Chipper then tells Dr. Strange that she was fired and is now a waitress. Chipper has had another job change. She was fired once again and says she's not too discouraged, she just doesn't understand why she got fired. Now she is a nanny. Next Chipper is a garbage collector, but then has a change of heart. She decides that she has a whole new perspective on life and she has decided she is going to go back to school. This video was a good way to show how many students, including myself, procrastinate with their education. I have done so myself and am now having to go back to school as a 24 year old single mother. Things like this are hard to swallow, but sometimes you have to go through the bad things to get to the good things in life.

EDM 310 for Dummies 
This video was about how EDM310 can drive you crazy, but it also shows us how different things can make EDM310 so much easier. The ladies in the video then go on to talk about how they are learning so much in the classroom and following different English teachers. The blog posts are getting easier for them and they are learning how to do things. They were so happy to get their hands on the "book" EDM310 for Dummies. All of these things that they have learned have helped them in their academic journey here at South. I would like to create some videos about how much my computer skills have improved since I started taking this class. I was really stressed out at the beginning of the class, but once things got going, I decided that I liked the class. It is just very demanding as far as time.


Learning to Change, Changing to Learn
This video started out by saying that education was ranked so low in the IQ intensity list. It was below coal mining. Kids are stimulated more outside of school than they are inside of school. Email, instant messaging, social networking and text messaging are banned from schools, when technology is what is stimulates the brains of these children. It is about relationship, community, and how the children are living in a different community. An online social networking community.

The very things that our students need are banned from their schools. Students learn at home, at libraries, at home, at museums and it is our responsibility to provide them with the best teachers for them. We have a "classroom system" when we need a "community system". Education doesn't have what it needs these days. They aren't interested in what they are learning because the teachers are banning them from being creative. Standardized testing doesn't make things better because economically speaking, these students will be doing work that calls on their artistic ability, understanding concepts, multilingual and multicultural abilities. Not on something that they should give a right or wrong answer to. I love this video. It was very inspiring. It made me think about what kind of teacher I want to be one day when I finally graduate.

Scavenger Hunt 2.0
Web 2.0 is interactive, there is something there that you can do or create. It is collaborative. Other people can contribute to the things that you create. This is a very significant and positive factor for education. it leads to higher education, critical thinking skills, new capabilities, alternative learning environments, extending learning beyond a school room, and finally it creates lifelong learning skills for students.

On the website I thought that the tool that created this presentation wast the Animoto. This was a tool that can be used to animate yourself into a video. It is a nice price because you can choose to pay 30.00 a year or 5.00 a month. That way if you don't want to pay for an extra month because you don't feel that you need it anymore,  you can just not spend the money. Paying monthly to me seems a little more ideal.

The tool that I had never used before was the slide share tool. I thought this was neat because it is something you can use to share presentation, slide shows and professional videos. There is even a way that you can share them privately so that you don't have to publish something that you don't want others seeing. I thought this was great.

This was a poll that I created using polleverywhere.com

Create interactive meetings at Poll Everywhere