Lessons Learned

I have learned a great amount from the readings and videos. Something from the readings that I enjoyed was “Tools for Change,” by Kathy Schrock. In “Tools for Change” I learned the comparison of instructional practices for both the teacher and student. With the student instructional practices it said for the old way that they are the receiver and with the new they are the searcher. Students today are searching and exploring in the educational setting. Another thing I learned was that it talked about the new way for content and it said real-world problems. Tying real-world problems into the curriculum has increased immensely. I have seen this help students make connections on a whole other level with content.

In the “Did You Know” video it was full of powerful information. Some of the information made me speechless. This video was beyond interesting. As I watched this I learned that many things might be affected in the future. For example, it said that we are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist. It not only discussed the United States, but also other countries such as China and India. Also using technologies that haven’t yet been invented. The video discussed that if MySpace was a country that it would be the 11^th largest in the world between Japan and Mexico. The amount of technical information is doubling every 2 years. After viewing this video I know without a doubt that technology is changing right before our eyes. Our society evolves around technology and we rely on it 24/7.

The other article that I really liked was titled "Study: Teens See Disconnect Between Personal and School Writing". I worry about our youth today because I feel that many of them are losing the ability to communicate with others. So many youth are online using Facebook or texting. Almost everything is abbreviated such as “lol” and teens say things like “U2” rather than writing you too. As teachers need to allow the students to be creative. The article stated that many of the students feel that they are not able to be creative in their school writing, but they can be creative when they are writing on Facebook, in texts or other non-school writing. We can and should allow students to be creative. We have been learning in this class how to do that by teaching students for example to blog their thoughts as a journal, create their own websites, and digital stories.