Blog Post #2

Did You Know by Karl Fisch
In this video, Karl Fisch created a way to show many facts that are applicable to today's society. Although they may be true today, tomorrow they may increase. He has told facts that relate to technology in a major way. Some of these are subjects related to jobs, other countries, learning, school, networking, words, and a supercomputer. These things have majorly increased over time in certain aspects.


One fact that was shown is that there are 5x more words today than there  were in Shakespeare's time. He also referred to other countries for a lot of information. According to the facts, countries such as China and Indonesia are way ahead of us in technology, having babies, and other things. We are pretty far down on the list when it comes to some technological advances, but we do not notice it sometimes because everything seems to advance so fast. In all honesty, I am not a huge fan of increasing in technology so fast. It can come to a point where technology is not about communication in a good sense any more; Instead, it can and is becoming dangerous in many aspects.
Mr. Winkle Wakes by Matthew Needleman
"Mr. Winkle Wakes" is a short film about a man, Mr. Winkle, who has been asleep for 100 years and recently woke up. The first place he went to was an office building. There he saw people on computers, and others who were talking to people from different places through the computer. Next, he went to the hospital where people were kept alive through machines and he did not understand that, so he left. His last trip was to a school. There he found things very similar to the way it was when he was younger.
This film was obviously speaking of advances that have been made throughout the century and how some did not understand it. Some people are not fond of technology while others are. Obviously this man was not, although I'm sure it was very confusing for him to see all of these advances. If one is to think a little deeper, it is possible that  the author is trying to make a point that school is not as advanced as it should be. Personally, I learn much better in a normal classroom setting taking notes and listening to an instructor truly teach the material.  Not everyone will agree with all technological advances, but that is okay. We are all different and see things differently.


Vicki Davis: Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts
 This video shows a teacher who is using technological advances in her classroom. She has taken a school in South Georgia and used her classroom to represent new ways of learning. In this video she speaks of some of the things that we are being introduced to in EDM 310. She also uses blogging and group projects that are done via computer technologies.
I like that she used the sentence along the lines of saying that the kind of learning she is using helps certain kinds of learners. Not everyone is going to pick up this kind of learning quickly and some might still prefer pen and paper. However, it is good to represent new forms of things to learn as technologies increase. She seems to know what she is talking about and has a plan of knowing how to teach the material and/or let the students learn it themselves.

Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson speaks of creativity and education at this conference. He starts off speaking mainly of education and how it is sometimes forced on people to get an education. He speaks of how it seems forced for people to continually increase in schooling and education to become who you really are, as some might think. He also speaks of how it seems like parents and others often tell children who they are going to be, such as they are going to be a teacher and not a dancer so they just need to focus on learning to be a teacher.

I like how he desires for parents and others to help "make something of  [the children's] future."  I also like the example he used of a little girl who could not sit still. He went on to say that many might automatically think that the girl needs to be on medicine, but in all reality, she could not sit still because she wanted to dance. When that girl was given an opportunity to do what she wanted to do most, to dance, she excelled. It is time to stop telling people who they are supposed to become, and rather foster that desire to do what they want to and run with it. We learn best what we love best.