Blog Assignment #4

Learning How 2 Learn
There were many articles, slides, etc. that I found quite interesting in this assignment, and one of them happens to be "Learning How 2 Learn" by Silvia Tolisano. This mainly states how it isn't the inability to read that will soon label people as "illiterate" but the inability to think and be learners on their own. The slides demonstrate how people need the willingness to reflect, amplify, and to have a sense of self-motivation. It supports iPad usage and digital reading among children, and refers to the idea that using pen, paper, and hand-writing is on its way to becoming an aspect of the past. Instead of focusing so much on technology, it simply shows how ultimately, we are helping people learn, but in a way that will help them stay updated on the resources used by the world.
Although my opinion of technology was slightly negative when I first entered this class, articles and blogs, such as this one, are helping me slowly open my mind to new concepts of teaching. I support the ideas found here because we do live in a world that is continually evolving and becoming more dependent on technology for the completion of everyday tasks. Technology is not meant to harm or confuse us, but to help us accomplish goals faster and more diligently than ever before. If we do not help students adapt to the usage of new tools such as iPads, ebooks, and things of that nature, then we are not only hindering them from being technologically literate, but from being able to perform actions that are becoming more familiar to our daily lives. Change is something that we cannot stop, but we can embrace it and let it help us stay relevant to people and cultures everywhere.
Podcasting With First Grade
Mrs. Tolisano's post "Podcasting with First Grade" demonstrated how podcasting can be very beneficial in elementary schools with reading, listening, and story-telling. After recording the voices of the students and letting some of them even act as the characters, she was then able to repeat the story to other students, breaking the rules of traditional classroom reading. She also incorporated other fun aspects into the story, such as letting the students interview each other when pretending to be characters. The use of Garageband also contributed to the learning process here by allowing some students to record their voices directly, while other students were able to read or get other work done. Music and sound effects were also able to be added because of this technique.
If I were planning on teaching elementary school one day, podcasting would be a key ingredient in the recipe for a fully functional classroom. Not only does this idea help the students focus and interact more with the story they were reading, but it also sharpens each child's creative side and allows them to share his or her skills with the class. Because we also want students to remain motivated at all times, I found this to be a great way to do so. Because podcasts can be heard across the country or around the world, it is an excellent chance for children to gain audiences that have fallen in love with their skills, and ultimately proving the effectiveness of their skills. Although I will be teaching somewhere between sixth and twelfth grade in the future, the concept of using podcasts to engage students in the activities and help them with interacting and communicating skills will always remain in the back of my mind, ready to be used at any time.
Learning in the Modern Classroom
"Learning in the Modern Classroom" teaches readers a lot about how technology can be used, broken down, and expanded for various uses for individual assignments in schools. Not only that, but one can also see how easy it is to have fun with technology use here! This post demonstrates how taking something as simple as a book of poetry can cause a ripple effect of uses for technology. After many Skype meetings between the writer of the poems, Mike Fisher, and the students who were each assigned one of his poems to work with, audiences can easily see how social networking such as Skype and Twitter can help students evolve in more ways than one. Not only were students able to quickly learn skills such as using Google Doc and Chat and evolving as writers with each tweet they sent, the teacher was also able to monitor basic communication techniques with the help of Skype, such as vocabulary, body language, and their abilities to keep up with a conversation.
If someone were to ask me three weeks ago if I thought Twitter usage in elementary classes was a good idea, there's a chance that I would have had them committed. I never would have even fathomed that something like Twitter would help expand the mind of students and enhance their abilities to learn and succeed in life if it were not for reading articles such as these. I now see that something as mundane as Twitter can be useful in helping children communicate with others far away, expose them to new ideas, and bring out the creative side to each child that, unfortunately, so many teachers have tried to suppress in past years. The twenty-first century is now the modern century; therefore, we must adapt to modern times. If we don't train children to be able to effectively use media and technology to to help them grow academically, we aren't keeping them from being technologically literate, but are keeping them from being the learners and contributors to the world that they were meant to be. The main concept of these posts that I plan to incorporate into my own podcasts is that of interaction. Though it is sometimes misunderstood as something that can hold us back from having good communication skills, I believe technology usage, such as podcasts, are ultimately designed for one purpose: to help us learn and communicate ideas with others in a way that has been virtually enhanced, and to be able to better understand the ideas presented to me than if I were to only read them in a book. My main goal in sending my first podcast (and every podcast, for that matter) is to send out clear, effective messages, and to have great responses. Hopefully, I will learn much more material about podcasting to help me along the way.