Week one

Mr. Winkle Wakes

Mr. Winkle Wakes


The video Mr. Winkle Wakes is obviously a takeoff of Rip Van Winkle. Mr. Winkle awakes in our modern world after a one hundred year nap. He is scared and uncomfortable in this technological society. His journey begins at an office building, where the computers were used to communicate throughout the world. When he went to the hospital, he was surrounded by machines that helped people to breathe and kept them alive.

Finally, he finds a place that he is comfortable in, a place that hasn't changed much since he fell asleep. Unfortunately, this place is a school. This video points out the lacking that exists in our school systems, and how we are behind the times technologically. Our entire society is reliant upon technology, and yet we are not teaching it to our children. So how can they be expected to handle this world if they are not exposed to it now and taught about it by technologically literate teachers?

Did you know 3.0

Did you kno2 3.0

Did you know 3.0 was an informative video about how technology is effecting the world today. More importantly, it is about the effect technology will have tomorrow, and over the next several years. It gave several statistics and a few predictions involving technology, for the most part in the United States, China, and India.

In the beginning, the stats mostly concentrated on the discrepancies, in size and growth for the most part, between India and China verses that of the US. Gradually, they worked more toward the trends that technology becomes outdated so quickly in our day and age. It also showed how global trends have become more and more quickly spread as we move forward.

Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity

The Importance of Creativity

In this video, Ken Robinson addresses a crowd of educators. He is talking about the waste of creativity of in young minds. He tells them that children seem to be more willing to take a chance because they are not afraid of being wrong. And if you are not willing to be wrong then you will never be able to come up with anything original. Since we live in a society that discourages mistakes, we suppress creativity.

He also talks about the hierarchy of subjects in schools around the world. Math, Language, History, and Science are always at the top. The bottom rungs are are always the arts. He argues that dance can be just as important as Math. He says that schools are made this way to prepare people for jobs involving only those few subjects and is structured as an entrance to university. He then talks about an extremely successful dancer and choreographer who was thought to have a learning disability as a child, when she was actually just not made for the type of learning that they tried to force upon her. What he is saying is that we have to look at what we teach children with and open mind.

Vicki Davis: Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts

Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis is a teacher in Georgia that uses technology to connect her students to the rest of the world. This opens up the kids to various opportunities that they would never get in your standard classroom. She also realizes that she cannot know everything, and that by encouraging these kids to teach themselves, and even teach her at times, she is breaking down the limitations set before them.

These kids live in a very rural area, something that I cannot relate to. And yet they are more connected to the global society than I have ever been. This really shows what a difference technologies in the classroom can make on our young minds. It also proves to me that the kids will be teaching me while I teach them, and that I need to have an open mind about that.