Blog #6 Contribution to Learning
This week was one of those weeks where epiphanies happened and I believe I learned a whole lot more than I contributed to the class. After watching videos, reading books, reading other student’s blogs, and thinking through my own personal philosophy of technology in the classroom, I was too exhausted and “brain-fried” to believe I had anything of value to offer anyone. But, I did write to student teams about the great things I saw on their websites. So many of these students really have the technology skills down really well. I loved that they did such a great job on their sites and I shared a few things I thought they could do to improve their sites such as making sure the games they choose to highlight were games that would be useful to the majority of students who played them. For instance, I suggested that games like flight-simulators would be fun and educational, but only a limited number of students would really benefit from it and become pilots, whereas a game such as one that Chrysler has available to teach students how to drive by teaching “rules of the road” might be a better choice because of the high number of students it affects.
When responding to blogs, I mentioned to Leslie my frustration with technology. I guess I see it more now that I am on vacation in the Florida area and see so many people using technology, not as a tool, but more of a distraction of what is really important in life. I sit at a cafeteria at Disney World and watch entire families sitting around a table, each with a phone, and not seeing the world going on around them. No conversations...nothing. It makes me sad that a tool that is so helpful and beneficial to our world is robbing families of time together. I guess that is not contributing to learning to a certain degree, but on the other hand, it may help us to all focus on the awesome tool technology is, but also remember that it can be our biggest enemy as well.
Megan and Sara H had a few points I responded to on each of their blogs. I especially like the quote mentioned by Thomas and Seely about the teacher of the past was the authority and holder of knowledge...in fact, I had used the same quote in my blog. But, the warning always comes to my mind that just because we read something doesn’t mean it is true or helpful to us. We must filter and ponder what we read or hear from others and not accept what folks say as truth just because they are smart or appear to know what they are talking about.
I mentioned to Sara H that the hard part is helping our students to be wise enough to be able to distinguish WHO are the good teachers in our lives and WHAT is the information that is valuable and good in order to be successful in life.
I guess, my main contribution to this week had to do with a philosophy to learning...being very careful who we allow our teachers to be. In other words, we must be careful who we let influence us, and really careful about who we allow to influence our children. Sure, everyone is a teacher, but is everyone teaching “good stuff” to those we are responsible for? The answer is obviously, “No”!
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