Blog Post # 2

The central message of the video, Mr. Dancealot, is that to actively engage in learning, you have to participate and not just wait for everything to be a given. With this type of lecture class, you have to do your own research and be focused on new ways of learning. Professor Dancealot makes the case for my conclusion because he provides the student's with the assignment, lectures on it, but he doesn't provide any demonstrations or hands on practice, until at the end when he tests them and no one is prepared for it. If my premise for the video is what I have come to conclude, then I agree with the notion that if you set your expectations to think that the teacher will do all the work, then you won't be prepared if you don't investigate the kind of courses you are taking and what is expected of you to do well in it.

From what I understood about the video, Teaching in the 21st Century, Roberts thinks that teaching in the 21st Century is to get away from the old ideals of teaching and rethink the way that students need to be taught, so as to allow them to be up to date, technically literate, creative and think in collaborative terms. I think that Roberts is providing a great opportunity for us to realize how much the landscape has changed in the teaching field and what kinds of students are now being taught. Like Roberts, I believe that students should be engaging what they learn, because the old way of learning hardly ever afforded me that challenge, which would have made me a more astute student. As an educator, if Roberts is correct, then my whole way of thinking has to change and I have to dedicate tons of more time to fully understanding how to set up a classroom for students that will engage their eager minds and not sell them short by refusing to engage in a changing school environment myself. By providing "meaningful and powerful engagement"(Roberts) to our students, I feel confident that they will achieve much more in the classroom and throughout their lives.

In the video, The Networked Student, the most obvious point for future teachers is that you have to keep pace with the changing environment of the classroom and be prepared to never stop learning or you won't be able to teach at a competent level. Showing how one element of education can have so many different levels of gathering the information, such as Google Scholar, indicates how far and widespread information technology goes to achieve the most basic of tasks for students. I would never have thought that sharing information at such a level requires a thorough

knowledge of the networks that are in use today. Everybody is sharing everything in the digital ether now, and that is why I think the question, "Why does the networked student even need a teacher," points its way back at teachers being the real leaders in the classroom and that more is expected of them than ever before. The illustrations in the video of all the different leader character traits, such as Network Sherpa and modeler, both of which implies someone who leads through positive role model influence, and competent enough to astutely mold the students into strong engagers in the classroom. After all, it should be that a teacher is only as good as his/her best student, which simply means to teach with a passion in the hopes your students surpass even you. I have included a similar video, Connected Classroom by Kristin Hokanson, that expounds on the subject a little more, with the hope that the two together makes the point of teachers being innovative leaders as well as educators. It is a worldwide classroom and now is the time to get connected to that world.

Vicki Davis's thesis in Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts is to connect her students with other students around the world through classroom activities that allow teams of students and teachers to share their knowledge with one another. They are doing this through a connective media vein called Digiteen, which allows them to share comments about their research and writings with their peers on a global scale. This is the kind of thing that I want to learn more about, because thinking that I can link all of the great ideas of my future students with those of students around the world seems to me to lead some great innovations and "esprit de corps" among the nations.

It is obvious that Ms. Davis didn't just have an idea; she implemented it to such a degree that they have already traveled to other nations where they all collaborated on what the project offers. Edutopia is stocked with tools that I am going to be getting very familiar with, especially with the many media tools in their kit. This is The Networked Student after it eats a bag of sugar, in my opinion, because it shows what a teacher can truly do if given a real opportunity to lead his/her students.

I am surprised that I had never heard of flipping a classroom prior to watching the video, but after watching Flipping the Classroom, it seems like something that will catch on and a tool I could use in the classroom. What's so fascinating about it is that it really gives the student and teacher more time to engage, together, the activities that are presented. The research that Dr. Lodge did to arrive at this innovative step in the classroom would seem to work because it allows the student to get the information/assignment before bedtime, which will allow the conscious(before bedtime) and the subconscious(before, during and after bedtime) to have some real time to consider what is presented. The students mind would already be engaging the problem and working on solutions, so it would be great to get the collaborative insights from students and work on those during in-class time. If I knew the classroom could be used with such innovation, I would have started towards a degree in education much sooner. Nice to know we are pushing the envelope so hard.

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Sources: Flat Classroom, Space Flight Now, Video Reality, YouTube.