Blog Post #5

The iSchool Initiative

Travis Allen's iSchool Initiative is a call to arms for students and teachers to join iSchool, a teaching and learning resource used on the iDevice's itouch screens. With teachers being laid off and classroom sizes growing, the iSchool acts as a way to cut costs and keep students in the digital age interested in learning, and using technology to do so. The cost of supplies, books, and other fees can be crippling to some students and their families. The iSchool would remove the need for paper, printers, calculators, pens, and pencils, saving the family countless dollars. The iSchool itself will only run $150.00 per student. Because students would not have to buy as many disposable supplies and textbooks ( iSchool has a textbook app ), there would be far fewer resources used per student in their school career.

In the short video Zeitgeist YoungMinds Entry (Mobile Learning) iSchool Initiative Travis Allen informs us of the success he has had with the iSchool program. He and his team of twenty five other students travel the nation working with public schools helping them implement the program. This is a wildly important thing that needs to happen. I believe the youth of today are being born into a technological wonderland. It is very important that they are prepared, starting at a young age, to use these programs and products to better prepare themselves for the life that is ahead of them.

Virtual Choir

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 'Lux Aurumque' is a amazing video of 185 different people from twelve different countries singing together from around the world using the internet. With the use of video and audio capture, the composer, Eric Whitacre, was able to have people from around the world join in and lend their voice to his vision. This is a great showing of how the internet can keep everyone connected even across the world and that even so far away from each other we can still do great things.

Teaching in the 21st Century

In the video Teaching in the 21st Century Kevin Roberts talks about the way teaching needs to change in the technology age. Educators are no longer the only medium by which students come to find information, they are now using multimedia devices, social media, and the internet to learn on their own.

Living in the information age has opened endless ways to seek out and find knowledge, with things like Google and Wiki, people have more ways to find answers to their questions with out waiting until the next class. As educators, it has become important not only to impart knowledge, but to assist in the finding as well. Using iPads, podcasts,and different wikis in the class is a way for the teacher to not entertain their students, but to engage them in learning. As Kevin stated in his video, it is not the job of the teacher to entertain students, but to engage them. Engaging gets the students involved in learning, and that, in turn, should be fun.

<Flipping the Classroom

Flipping the classroom is essentially putting class material online for students to work at their own pace, giving you (the educator) more class time to apply and engage students in the lessons. In its application, it allows teachers to spend more time helping the struggling students, keeping the middle ground students on track, and letting the advanced students stay ahead of the game all by having as much material as needed/desired. This is a great tool to keep the teacher as the centerpiece of the class and having students stay involved in their learning and makes them responsible for their own learning.

Taking EDM310 has shown me that "flipping" the class can work. We have our assignments and all of the necessary learning tools online for us in an easy to find place in a blog format. I would like to implement this to a science course in the near future. To have all of the resources online in a blog would not only help facilitate the distribution of knowledge, but it would help me as a teacher keep track of my students' personal progress. room