PLN 3-2

I have just recently finished a post written by Vicki A. Davis titled Is text-only enough for today's students? Throughout this article, she gives you two choices on which tells the story more clearly. You are give a text about it and a picture, video, wedpage, or slide show about it. The purpose is to show that text isn't always the best way to tell a story and I agree. Sometimes, a visual of what happened is the best way for someone to comprehend something. On the news for example, they read the story to you from the text they have written down and then show you a visual (a video of someone standing at the exact spot where this story developed or a picture of the event) which helps people to understand more about what happened. Today, technology is a huge factor in many peoples lives and is very convenient and informative. In school, teachers try to use visuals also to help kids understand the meaning of the story. We watch movies and are showen pictures which really helps us to comprehend what is happening. Around the world, people are using technology to help understand the effents that are happening and the visuals they use are helping them to understand the effents more clearly.

PLN 3-1

I have recently read an article posted by The Think Lab called Is Payment for Good Grades Legitimate Motivation in This Day and Age. I believe that payment is a good motivator but a bad tactic to use. A student should try to strive for good grades in hopes of a good future, not for money. If the only reason that you are motivated to get good grades is for money, then you will never truly be successful. Many students today will want to do better grade wise for money, but if that is their only motivator, they probably still won't work as hard as they really could if they were striving for good grades in hopes of a good future. Grades have become a low priority to many teens today which is horrible. They tend to not care so much about important grades that will help them achieve a good future. Maybe if you tempt them with money, then they will at least try a little harder, but if they truly don't care about their grades, they probably won't try their hardest. Personally, my parents give me money for good grades at the end of 2nd semester, but I don't strive for good grades for that reason. I care tremendously about my grades and even if my parents didn't award me with money, I would still strive to do my best.

"Overall, the gap of relevance seems to grow wider and wider between school
and life for most kids in most schools. While money (or even the promise
of acceptance into a 'good college') may offer a short-term incentive and even
be fair game in some settings, I wonder if we would be better served to invest
our energies and finances in re-imagining the original value proposition that
engendered school to society in the first place."

PLN 2-2

I have recently finished an article posted in the Fischbowl titled Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? In this article, Mr Fisch said that 1. All educators must achieve a basic level of technological capability.2. People who do not meet the criterion of #1 should be embarrassed, not proud, to say so in public.3. We should finally drop the myth of digital natives and digital immigrants. Back in July 2006 I said in my blog, in the context of issuing guidance to parents about e-safety:"I'm sorry, but I don't go for all this digital natives and immigrants stuff when it comes to this: I don't know anything about the internal combustion engine, but I know it's pretty dangerous to wander about on the road, so I've learnt to handle myself safely when I need to get from one side of the road to the other."The phrase may have been useful to start with, but it's been over-used for a long time now. In any case, after immigrants have been in a country for a while, they become natives. We've had personal computers for 30 years, and I was using computers in my teaching back in 1975. How long does it take for someone to wake up to the fact that technology is part of life, not an add-on?4. Headteachers and Principals who have staff who are technologically-illiterate should be held to account.5. School inspectors who are technologically illiterate should be encouraged to find alternative employment.6. Schools, Universities and Teacher training courses who turn out students who are technologically illiterate should have their right to a licence and/or funding questioned.7. We should stop being so nice. After all, we've got our qualifications and jobs, and we don't have the moral right to sit placidly on the sidelines whilst some educators are potentially jeopardising the chances of our youngsters.
I believe that teacher do have to be technologically literate because technology is becoming a major part of many peoples lives. Teachers who don't know how to work a computer will fall behind because so much is done on the computer. In my science class for example, my text book is on the internet which is very convenient. The internet is also becoming a major research area. Many interesting facts are online. Thousands of websites will pop up in seconds on one search. The problem with this is knowing which websites are good and which aren't. Teachers who aren't technologically literate will fall behind and his/her students will suffer. People all around the world are using technology more and more, and this drastic increase in technology use will just keep building itself, until in every classroom, children will be using their own personal laptops and education will be linked with the new technology that has yet to come.

Presentation Evaluation

Overall, Friday's presentation was pretty good, but I still need to work on not sounding so nervous and fidgeting so much. I think I did a good job at keeping eye contact with everyone and not talking to fast which I normally do.

PLN 2-1

I have recently finished an article by David Warlick titled "Could it happen here?" that talked about how in Shanghai, teachers from all over attended a conference to discuss development of schools of the future and I agree with him when he stated that the US should also create a similar conference.
Technology plays a major role in education today and it will keep increasing as time goes by. Books are now on the Internet and in my English class, we are using laptops everyday. It is important for students and teachers to know how to use this technology and it is also important for teachers to discuss what is going to happen about technology in the future. Schools of the Future to me means that everything is located on the computer. Instead of books, students will acquire their own personal laptops with online books. If teachers attend a conference about the development of schools of the future, it will be easier for the students and the teachers to transition into this new method of teaching. In science, I was never given a text book. My text book is online and it is a lot easier for me. I don't have to remember to bring it home and I also don't have to strain my back by carrying it home everyday. Technology can be very helpful but it can also be hurtful if you don't know how to use it properly. This is why teachers need to learn and know what to expect. It is easy for the Internet to feed you the wrong information because anyone is able to put down what ever information they want onto a .com web address. The Internet can be a dangerous place if you don't know what you are doing. It is important for teachers to get together and discuss what they find helpful in terms of technology to try and make the best education possible for the students.

PLN 1-2

I have recently finished reading a post titled How Much Do You Value Test Scores written by Karl Fisch regarding test scores. This post was concerning test scores and there importance. I believe that too much emphasis is put on a single test score. I believe it is important for the teacher to administrate tests so they can decipher what his/her students don't quite understand, but if a student doesn’t do their best job on one test, it can lower their grade dramatically, even if they succeed at doing very well on their homework and other class assignments. Many factors besides just not knowing the answer can affect a student’s grade. They could be overly tired and not be able to concentrate, or not have eaten breakfast which also is proven to lower concentration levels. Also, the pressure for a student to do well on a test especially something like the SAT’s is so immense that sometimes students do worse then they could really do if they didn’t feel so pressured. I have recently taken a math test and did horrible on it. I was horrified to watch my grade drop so dramatically because of one test grade. I have recently read a book called “The Overachievers” and it talks a lot about how stressful tests are on students and how maybe they aren’t always the best way to prove a students intellectual ability. Take the SAT’s for example. You are allowed to take the SAT as many times as you would like, and usually you score differently. How can that prove anything if in just a month or so you can do extremely better or worse then when you first took it? Around the world, people are taking tests everyday and whether it is a huge test, small test, good grade, or bad grade, the tests are having a major impact on the grades of the kids and where they attend school. In the classroom, kids are very stressed out about tests and that can cause some down falls during test time. I still do feel that tests are necessary to make sure the students understand the material without having to look up the answers but sometimes students are studying so much and they just forget everything they learned after they are done with the test which isn’t the purpose of administrating tests.

PLN 1-1

I have just finished reading a recent post by Will Richardson called My Flickr Conundrum.This blog raises a question about taking photographs of landscape. His question was, “why take pictures of places that you visit that probably aren’t going to be as good as the photos that others have already taken that are already available for you to use in your own albums, slide shows, whatever? I mean, unless you want to organize the wife and kids in front of the spot just to prove you’ve been there, what’s the point?”

I believe the point is to be able to call the picture your own. You can always look up a picture on the internet, but if you do that, you are not able to say, “I was there and I took that picture.” It doesn’t matter if it’s the worst picture in the world, you can still be very proud of it.

On a personal note, my family travels quite a bit because of my dad’s conferences around the world. When I was little, I used to take pictures all the time of landscape that I thought was beautiful. They were never good pictures, but I kept them all, and it is entertaining for me to go back and recall the memories I had from that particular picture and be able to say, “I took that picture!”

I believe that the pictures that you take yourself are a way to make certain the memories stick with you. If you capture your own shots, you will remember how you felt at the moment and recall all the memories you had at that time. Even if you can find that same picture somewhere else, you can't say that it's your picture or remember your thoughts and feelings at the time.

The picture below is a picture of New Jersey. My class had our 8th grade trip and we visited D.C., Philadelphia, and New York. This isn't a particularly good picture, but I remember exactly what happened. We were in the bus driving from Philadelphia to New York and I remember looking out the window and thinking that we were in New York and I really wanted a picture of New York and I was so excited that when I was reaching for my camera, I smacked my friend right in the face! It was kinda funny cause she didn't get hurt, but I clearly remember that moment!
This can relate to the world because people usually try to take the easy way out and try to find everything that someone else did. They can never be proud of say a photograph because they always look it up on the internet.

In the classroom, this concept of taking the easy way out is common in many students. They just want to finish the work and then they forget about it. Because they copied off of someone else, they don't remember what they learned and won't get anything out of it.