Blog post #5

Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?
Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky. He also is the Founding Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the nation’s only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators, and was a co-creator of the wildly popular video series, Did You Know? (Shift Happens).
The blog post "Don't Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?" is challenging the "old" way of thinking in regards to teaching practices. This is exactly what I blogged about in my Blog Post #3 below. The way students are taught as well as the way teachers are taught to teach, has not significantly changed in over 100 years. The ideas and methods of education need to be revamped and retooled - quickly! Dr. McLeod couldn't have hit the nail any squarer on the head with this blog post. The last section in his post is particularly moving:

"really

'cause I'm doing all of it with my kids

can't wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or two

can you?"

We need to challenge the old way. "Because it has always been done that way" thinking needs to be changed. We are the future of education in this country. It is our responsibility.


The iSchool Initiative and ZeitgeistYoungMinds
Travis Allen was just 17 years old in 2009, when the first video "The iSchool Initiative" was made. He received an iPod Touch for Christmas that school year and saw then how powerful it could be if used in the classroom. He now is President and CEO of iSchool Initiative, a group of 25 college students that travels the country and shares their ideas of a technologically advanced classroom. Travis claims that if schools went paperless by way of the iPod Touch, the savings would be around $450 per student per year. That is not pocket change when you consider even a school with 500 enrolled students would be saving at least $250,000 every year!
The monetary benefits are only scratching the surface when it comes to this idea. I have school aged children, and I know how hard it is to keep up with their homework and out of class assignments. We all remember being in elementary, middle, and high school. For the majority of students, keeping up with their assignments is not the first on their list of priorities, even if it should be. As a parent, I would love to be able to access a data base through my phone or computer that would allow me to see exactly, up to the minute (maybe hour depending on the teacher), how my child is doing in their classes and what work they have to do when they get home.





Just saw this on the nbc nightly news this is amazing
Monizzle145


This is the most incredible thing I've ever seen.
BrittanyRose1991


this is just marvelous...
Nhotavo


Tears
pwilson87

Is this what Heaven will sound like ........... what a sweet sound all of you make. Perhaps there is hope for us.
silverblue571


I'm a composer. I am humbled. That is all.
histomage

I think they did a pretty good job summing that up....


Teaching 21st Century Students

This is an absolutely awesome slideshow presented by Kevin Roberts. I took a mental step back when I read the slide that said "teachers are not the number one source of information any longer. They are the filter." I never thought about it in that respect, but the world is at our fingertips now, and students are using the internet to learn. Everything you could ever want to know is right there. The problems is, everything that is out there is not necessarily the truth. Anyone can find the answer to a question in Google, or any other search engine, online encyclopedia, or YouTube, but how do they know if the answer they received was the correct one? That is where educators fit in to the circle. It is our responsibility to ensure the data that is absorbed by our students is factual. Not an easy task to say the least...

Reading Rockets

This is a one stop site for all of your educational resources when it comes to teaching a child to read. Weather you are a parent that needs to help your child at home or a principal that would like some extra insight on how to raise your school's reading level, Reading Rockets is the place to go.

For teachers, there is an abundance of information. The ABCs of Teaching Reading is a great place to start looking. Here are two topics that are discussed in this section:

Top 10 Things You Should Know About Reading: What it takes to learn to read, the achievement gap in the U.S., and how we can help struggling readers.

Reading 101: What you should know about print awareness, the sounds of speech, phonemic awareness, phonics, informal assessment, fluency, vocabulary, spelling, writing, and text comprehension.

Go to the site and take a look around. You will not be disappointed.