Chapter IX

     For my journal post I watched "7 degrees of connectedness" by Rodd Lucier. The video begins with Rodd leading us down a somber street in his hometown in Canada. The video is basically a series of interviews he does with his peers concerning the subject of using technology to become better educators. The first tool that is outlined is Twitter, which Lucier describes as a "tribe" of like-minded people he follows. Since he can control who he follows  he chose to follow fellow educators and over time began to interact with them. I personally don't have a Twitter but I can relate in my experience with Facebook. I use Facebook to add people I don't know but find interesting, which is technically against the rules. I have poets, musicians, debaters  and even some celebrities on my friends list. I have interacted with a few of these people and now have contacts around the globe. I could apply the same concept to education -- I could add the best educators in the world to my friend's list and every time I log in to Facebook I can be exposed to some of the greatest thinkers of this age.

     The next topic that's covered is Podcasts and how one of his acquaintances got involved in creating them. He describes starting out listening to teacher podcasts and his journey to becoming a popular podcaster himself. One thing that is stressed is the idea that everybody has a voice and podcasts can be a medium to project that voice to the masses. I personally have never really been into podcasts but they have an almost cult-like following. They're convenient because you can listen to them virtually everywhere, including you car, and I can see this being useful as a tool teachers can use to get through to students who simply don't have much time on their hands.

     The overall theme of the video is connectedness. In education, this concept is quite obviously opening new doors. Now with the rapid sharing of ideas and concepts, I believe we can move and improve education at a much faster rate than ever before.

Chapter VIII - Alternative Blog Post

For my chapter eight blog post I chose to write about David Warlick's blog 2 Cents Worth. I read the first post which was a piece on Gary Stager, a very prominent educator. In the article, Warlick goes over Stager's presentation at a recent education conference and lists some of his points. To my surprise, I found myself agreeing with Stager on almost all points.

One of the Stager quotations noted in the article read, "School should work with the tech of the day." The blogger then points out the poignant question of "why do we think education should be cheap?" The thought raises some questions to me:

Why are we not spending more on education?

Why are the worst schools the least funded? Shouldn't they get more funding since they are in obvious need of it?

Why are schools so behind in adapting technology?

The quotation also brought to mind an old mantra I heard once, probably uttered by some dreadlocked hippie wearing a 'legalize it' shirt. It went something like this: it will be a great day when schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.

The last part of the article moved me the most. In the very last lines Warlick writes, "What an amazing learning opportunity that surprise avails any teacher – wasted in this case, because she thought her classroom was about teaching, not about learning." I think far too many teachers don't take this advice to heart. They're focused so much on teaching they actually forget that they are there for the students and not vice-versa.