Refelective Blog #1

By creating a rough draft of my educational technology philosophy it helped my guide my thinking and help me focus what areas I want to work on while completing my masters degree. It gave me a jumping off point, and I love the fact that now I can merely go back and edit as I gain new knowledge, or change my current schools of thought. Having my ideas is mind will help me find specific areas to work on as I explore new avenues of technology.

I love blogging, i currently already utilize it in my classroom. Two years ago, after taking a 23 Things course offered through my district I created a classroom blog that I wrote in DAILY, last year, I was not quite as good about writing every day, but I did still use it. My students loved it, they enjoyed communicating in avenues different from the classroom, they loved to speed and ease of the accessibility. I can not wait to find more beneficial ways to utilize it in my class.

It is hard to choose which portion of November's article stood out to me the most. I definitely agree with #1 "if it's on the Internet is it true?' This is something we really need to focus on with our students because what I notice in my 5th grade class is that my students tend to believe anything and everything that they find on the Internet. Teaching the how to evaluate what you find is as important as the what you find.

Through exploring the sites and articles provided, I thoroughly enjoyed Prensky's Digital Native, Digital Immigrants article and as I read I made a list of key words that stood out to me, I made four sections, each titled Educational Technology, Today's Learner, Reality of Education Today, and Potential Impact Technology Can Have on Education. In reading the words/phrases: no going back, networked, "edutainment", "just do it" and www.hungry.com stood out to me in summarizing Educational Technology today. There is no going back to where we were, we all must be networked, as educators we need to "just do it", the kids respond to "edutainment" and the kids are www.hungry.com for technology usage in our classrooms. When describing Today's Learner these words jumped out at me: changed, discontinuity, singularity, N-gen, D-gen, "future", computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, computer games, email, internet, instant messaging, and Digital Natives. Our learners are now the Digital Natives, the are the N-gen/D-gen, they learn in faster paced facets such as through email, games, the internet, computers, cameras, instant message, cellphones etc. This learning style is the "future" of education, it has changed, and there is a discontinuity between where we are and where we need to be. The Reality of Education Today is that it is the digital age, our "legacy" of learning is no more, our student's thinking patterns have changed, we need to learn to communicate with them in their "accent". A cultural migration needs to happen with educators and we need no longer be Digital Immigrants. Instantaneity of learning needs to happen now, so we do not lose our students. The bold words in the above and below thoughts are what I found from the article. Lastly, the impact that technology can have would be Digital Immigrant Instructors, who now present graphics before text instead of vice versa, and allow our students random access to information, and allow game play as a way of learning because Digital Natives prefer games. We need to move at "twitch speed", let our students receive information really fast, offer less step-by-step processes and allow parallel learning to occur. Educators need to have a mind-shift, start teaching "future math" and "thought experiments". Without growth, education will be lost. Technology is the key.