Reflections for Class

The articles that I read for Unit 2 were interesting.  The first one “Digital Natives Digital Immigrants” by Marc Prensky was thought provoking.  I am a digital native, but this article helped me understand my parents and older people in education.   I remember when I was in high school and college thinking to myself how much faster this lecture would go if the teacher just put it online.  Instead of “sit and get” let me go on the internet and search for myself.  I feel like “edutainment” is a great opportunity for educators and parents, but companies cannot keep up with the regular games when it comes to quality.

The video “Web 2.0: The Web is Using Us” was interesting.  This video kind of made me think of the terminator movies.  However, I understand the importance of it.  Things have drastically changed in the last five years with the explosion of social media.  Blogs are still relevant, but facebook is by far the greatest idea sharing network out today.  Revolutions have been started and maintained through facebook.  It’s amazing the power that it can give people.

The video “Vision of Students Today” showed how different students are today.  It went along with the Prensky article.  Students today, like me, grew up watching tv, playing a game, and talking on the phone all at once.  We are the ultimate multi-taskers.  Even as I write this reflection, I have my facebook page up and music on.  This impacts my teaching.  I do not mind if students have their ipods in when they are working on things.  As long as I am not giving instruction or another student is not presenting, I say let them listen to music.

The last article “A Day in the Life of Web 2.0” by David Warlick was cool to read.  It shows how contagious ideas really can be.  When I was in high school, we did Socratic Seminars.  They were just simple discussions, but they gave us all different perspectives on issues which allowed us to form new opinions or stick to our original opinion.  Ideas have a snowball effect.  All of those activities are a reality, it just takes an open minded community, school, and teachers to do it.