Week+3+Journal+Entry

My reflections on week 3's readings and videos.

Classroom 2.0 Video. I thought it was a snazzy, fancy way of introducing a concept. Thinking skills are more important than computer skills. Who da thunk? I can see how this may have been an informative piece to someone that has lived in a cave for the last 10 years, but I feel the video itself is passé. The ideas discussed have been knocked around and dealt with for years by most of the teachers I know.

Instead of telling me I need to change my ideas on what is important they need to make the department of education change their content standards. The Department of Education needs to focus on the skills a student needs to develop in the digital age to be successful. I still need to teach concepts tested on standardized tests for my students to be considered successful by them. As soon as I see these concepts appear on the OGT, ACT, SAT I will feel more comfortable making them the focus of my class. The Academia 2.0 video ( [] ) on the same web page was interesting food for thought, but again I think it placed too much emphasis on the day to day use of technology and not enough on the use of technology as a teaching and learning tool. Just because I have taken a dozen classes online and gotten As on them doesn’t mean that online classes are superior. You can not replace an in-person facilitator with an on-line facilitator. You lose the intimacy, the wealth of immediate reaction that you can’t get on line. A teacher can react and adjust on the fly. Software is miles away from that currently. It is merely a convienience right now. The students using on-line notes instead of going to class are missing out on so much more. I know this. It just happened this weekend. My daughter came home from college this weekend to visit. As she sat in front of the computer I could hear her complain that the slides from class were not enough to study for her exam. She needed the experience of the classroom. I could tell that she, too, used the online slides as an excuse for skipping class. I could also tell that she was hurt by her actions.


 * Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning. It took forever to read all of this material. I think that any teacher that adjusts his methods to what he finds works best for a certain group of students is using constructivism whether he knows it or not. I also think that traditional teaching methods do not exclude many of the concepts discussed at length in these readings and videos **