A thought provoker

I received this through Darren Straight’s Blog, he is a Microsoft Student Partner.

Here is the Blog info.

 

A Vision of Students Today is a video created by Professor Michael Wesch and the 200 students enrolled in ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, Spring 2007. It began as a brainstorming exercise, thinking about how students learn, what they need to learn for their future, and how our current educational system fits in.

It’s pretty interesting to watch, plus you can also get a transcript of the A Vision of Students Today video here.

Enjoy!

 

What is technology in the Middle?

I’m sitting here at the Tech Office. I am one of the two instructors that are teaching the WebQuest class for our professional development “platform”. It is really exciting; last week we worked with 18 energetic, excited teachers. Well they were when they completed the project ! It was a class for the “beginner user”. As I instructed them at the beginning of the class, “We haven’t lost anyone yet!” They all made it through, had their WebQuests posted online, etc. I’m sure it had much to do with the WONDERFUL/HIGHLY TUNED TEACHING SKILLS of the instructors <gsh> but, it was probably more because they were determined!

This week we are teaching the class for the Advanced User. They are flying with their ideas… Definitely more of a “facilitator” this week, than a trouble shooter from last week!

We use MS Word to create the WebQuests, it’s just the easiest platform to train with… plus, it is already installed on our school notebooks, which makes it accessible!!! Very important, if they are going to do more with it in the future!

As I sit here, watching them work, thinking of the time they are offered to complete the projects, I think of how fortunate we are to have a school district that offers this opportunity. Our class is PDE Certified as a 2 credit class. They have to fulfill 30 hours, and they earn every minute of it! It really is a great opportunity!

Back to the main question of the post… What is technology in the Middle? It is a “catch all”… We are taking students from 5 separate elementary buildings and pulling together the “strings” as best we can, to accomplish a main goal. Some teachers take the approach of technology as a vehicle to get them there, some utilize many great teaching strategies (i.e., differentiated instruction), and some blend the two. I am on the side of “blending”… Within the structure of the room, we have many students (more and more each year) who are computer savvy. They can do many things on the computer. It’s getting them to do things in an appropriate manner (i.e., word & sentence structure Thank you IM!). Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the fact that they are communicating is a wonderful thing, we just have to harness it and help them “use it for good” HA!!!

I am in the mindset of educating, not taking things away. Many people will come back with, we aren’t there parents, that’s who should be taking care of this… Well, if we left it totally up to the parents… things would be rather scary in the classrooms today

I will post more on technology in the middle later!