You Tube Videos

Videos Each of the four "You Tube" videos takes a stance that our 21st century learners need to be taught with elements of technology - I agree completely that with our growing and changing learning community we need to be aware of what is out there for both our students and their teachers. Since technology is the wave of the future - we must continue to educate ourselves so that our classrooms can change to adopt new learning practices available with the technology. Some highlights that I really liked with regards to the videos - the impact of one thing creates lots of others, which is good for educators to really think about the things and problems of the future. How WILL we prepare our students to become literate for the changing world? Realization that literacy is not just about reading and books anymore, but has moved onto a broad spectrum that includes technology - cell phones, ipods, and computers - just to name a few. I thought the statistic in the 2nd video was startling about teachers not using the technology that is available. If we consider ourselves professionals, then we must behave as so - continuing education - changing with the times - and embracing workshops. Being adaptive - flexible - and willing to try new methods, ways of thinking, and interacting are all our responsibilities as educators of the future. On the last video, I really enjoy the sample assignment - I may even have to try that with my 9th grade English classroom and then open up for discussions on technology, communication, or how they can use their tools for education purposes.
Article - "Make Those You Tubes!"I chose this article mainly because I had just watched so many youtube videos. The article was important to me in the fact that we do block some applications, websites, and technological tools. My school does block youtube - I believe mostly because we fear our students will abuse it and not use it for educational purposes. That may stem from a lack of education to faculty and staff, as well as them not relaying the essence of purpose to students. The author comments that video is the new way of learning and that we should all be posting videos online on youtube or teacher tube - it is so easy to do and we would all become better learners if we were sharing the best stuff out there. I would like to embrace this idea too - but again it depends on the limits of technology and what we can do about youtube or something similar being available to our students. Questions for my administration: How can we better use technology for education? What can we do about unlocking websites? How do we teach our faculty to accept, learn, and then use this technology?