Changing Education Through Technology

It seems like everyone involved in education would agree that we need continue innovating new way is to integrate technology into the classroom.  Everyone also seems to agree that as the technology evolves we need to evolve the way we use it in the classroom.  However, what I found interesting about the videos that I watched today was the idea that not only do we need to evolve the way technology is used, but more importantly we need to evolve education as a whole and change some of the fundamental concepts of how and what we teach.
This idea of changing the actual bedrock of what we teach in schools was spoken about and illustrated very well in the short documentary Future Learning.  In this film professor Sugata Mitra of Newcastle University suggests that subjects such as arithmetic, that we have always seen as a fundamental part of teaching children, are not needed in today's world, because of the technologies that we have available today.  Instead, he postulates that what children should be learning instead is how to use these technologies and how to harness them for their educational needs.

Another aspects of this film that I found a specially interesting was their discussion of video games and how they can be very powerful tools for learning.  The reason I found this particularly interesting is because it goes along with anecdotal evidence that I have noticed in my own teaching experience.  As a volunteer EFL teacher in Brazil I worked a few students that spoke very good English, and when I asked them where they learned to speak English many of them told me that along with their courses in their school, where they were able to really pick up on the intricacies of the language was through playing video games.  I always thought this was very interesting so it was good to see those claims backed up by education professionals.

The other video I watched today was entitled Education Change Challenge, this video was much shorter than the first, but backed up much of what it said.  This video talked about how our style of education hasn't changed much in hundreds of years, even with the use of technology.  And it goes on to talk about how we must start to focus on the "experience dimension" of learning.  While this video did not go into as much detail as to how to use the technology, as someone currently learning to be a teacher I found it almost inspiring as it showed me how essential using technology will be in my classroom.
Really when it comes down to it I think I found both of these videos rather inspiring, because I think it is very important to realize that the way I learned when I was in school has changed drastically in the less than 20 years since I graduated.  With this knowledge and hopefully with what I am learning in all of my classes I will be able to adapt my view of teaching into something that will engage and challenge my future students.

Using Blogs to Meet Learning Standards

                With all of the dynamic tools available these days on even a basic blog, it seems like there could be an uncountable number of ways to use them as both a teaching and learning device.  With so much available it isn’t hard to see how these tools could be used to meet the New York State ESL standards. A blog could be used in an interactive way to address many different learning needs.

                One New Your State performance indicator for ESL students in 12^th grade is, “Students use a variety of print, oral, and electronic forms for social communicating and for writing to or for self, applying the conventions of social writing.”  This seems like the perfect way to integrate a blog into the classroom. By having the students start a blog of their own where they can talk about either their personal life or classroom topics, one could easily gauge their ability to communicate with the written word.

                Another way that one could incorporate a learning standard would be by using a blog to start an online book club.  The performance indicator that says, “Students describe, read about, participate in or recommend a favorite activity, book, song, or other interest to various audiences.” With the online book club student could discuss and recommend and describe books or possibly even other media with not only other students but the whole world. By starting the discussion online students would feel more comfortable expressing their opinions and have the time to express them well.

                That’s just a couple ways that blogs could be easily incorporated into the classroom. It’s incredible to think of all the different possibilities that we already have with blogs and I’m sure there are tons more that we haven’t even thought of yet.