Choice Blog 6 Final Thoughts

 As the semester quickly approaches the end I think back onto my experience in this technologic education class which was required of me.  I certainly feel as though my narrow old-fashioned thinking has slightly expanded.  Technology is the classroom is necessary in the classroom for its expands thinking to the wide world.  Unlimited answers the main function of developing technology and breaking this barrier is necessary in creating the best learning environment possible.
While computers can never replace the human hand no matter what graphic design nonsense is out there; there wil always be room for advance technology in my classroom.

Choice Blog 5

Listening to Themselves: Podcasting Takes Lessons Beyond the Classroom

The transfer of information from teacher to student is an intricate process which should be more than memorization.  Students should not restate facts but display an actual understanding of material.  If students can coherently explain the taught material in their own words, the teacher has done something successful.  That teacher was able to convey a message and it was deeply percieved.  The use of podcasts in the classroom that the article describes are a very good tool to engage the students into a deeper understanding of the lessons.  By having the students broadcast their assignments they are having to convert their knowledge into something understandable.  It is within this process that the students become teachers not soley recievers, and it is here where the students stand stonger in the educative process. A person gains a deeper understanding of a topic when asked to explain it to another.  This broadens the mind and extends material from mere understandings into living knowledge

Favorite Technologies

My every day life function the way in which it does with the aid of several technologies. As a student and a worker, I depend on the alarm clock in my cellphone to wake me when my need for sleep conflicts with my responsibilities. When awake I usually look to my computer to play music and update myself on the news.  It is nearly compulsive for me to open a computer and immediately open Huffington Post of BBC News.  I treasure my computer for these reasons, my iTunes I have 50 GB, all which I can honestly say I actually listen to and like.  All these song are arranged by complete albums of live shows with location and dates.  I should really back it all up actually.  

I live in Montclair about a fifteen minute drive from campus and I do not have a car.  I walk to work and I take a ten minute train ride to school.  I pay forty dollars a month for my Montclair train pass and rely heavily on this mode of transportation.

Nation Ed Tech Plan Puts Technology at the Heart of Education Reform
by: David Nagel
The National Educational Technology Plan released by United States Secretary, Arne Duncan, wishes to model our public educational system after a business through the serious implement of technology access to all teachers and students.  In a time of economic difficulty more creative and less expensive ways to improve schools should be sought rather than a super expensive plan than may not even be successful. While the plan seems to be quite scientific, standardized test have proven that a measurement of students in numbers and data does not include the look on their faces or that the errors may have been made on the verge of discovery.  The further away from human to human interaction our schools get, the more distance there will be between the students and actually understanding knowledge.  Discovery is not found on a computer. It is true that the world is at one’s finger tips vis the internet but we should not want our students and future scientists and leaders of the worlds to be making their discoveries while sitting down at a desk like a businessman in a suit.  This businessman is an adult, our students are children- their lives should be active not corporate.

In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores
Public schools should look to basic, creative and cheap ways to develop learning techniques, not spend billions of dollars on test driving them at the cost of loosing art, music and physical education.  The Kyrene School District's attempt to improve students discovery by using educators as guides rather than teachers and computers as the means for uncovering knowledge showed no positive standardized test results.  For those who believe standardized tests accurately measure knowledge, these results may show the new technologies implemented in the classroom to be unsuccessful. I do not believe that test scores are a proper measurement of any human's intelligence, so this data is of little use to me.  However I do think that there are more hands-on and cheaper ways to go about improving the public education atmosphere that would not cut art, music or physical education, which were my three favorite parts of schooling as a child.
The article describes the technologic aids in the classroom basically as promoters of discovery, even though a computer screen is almost as far from reality as a spoon is from a tooth pick.  I acknowledge the benefits of  computers and the internet for research and news purposes.  I do feel agree that schools should steer away from fact-based knowledge and more towards hands-on discovery, where the teacher is a guide rather than lecturer.  This should not take away from the arts or physical education, that is just depressing.  The approach should actually be a more artistic one where knowledge is unearthed by the students.  Scientists did not research their discoveries; they explored, touched and experienced just as artists work with a medium.  Though the use of technology in a classroom may bring the school into the future, the capacity to learn has long existed.  School must channel this curiosity towards nature for science, artifacts for history, classic novels for Language Arts and visible and real equation for math.  This would be a more basic and creative approach.   
In testing whether or not a school based on curiosity and hands-on discovery was successful, standardized testing may not be a proper measurement either.  This is an issue I feel as though I should not waste my time arguing but learning to work with.  Maybe testing should only occur in higher grades so the pressure to teach to the test during the most vulnerable years will no longer exist.  This way teachers will have the time to let the students explore outside, on field trips or watch plays that the teacher performs as a lesson.  We should not be aiming to produce robots of knowledge memorization but scientists of all the fields.