After watching Did You Know 3.0?, it is astonishing to me how far technology has come along. In just a single year, 365 days, so much can change. This video brings your attention to how much our society has become reliant on technology for almost anything. While these technologically advances are useful, what is it teaching society?
The video asks, "To whom were these questions addressed before Google?". I find it sad that I actually had to think about the answer to this question. It seems as though our society relies on the internet to just spit out an answer to everything rather than actually finding it out for ourselves. Technology is forever changing. Changing the way we think, changing the way we get through the day, changing the quality of our education.
Mr. Winkle Wakes by Mathew Needleman talks about how different our world is from just one hundred years ago. Not only has technology changed the way society's young people are educated, it has also greatly changed the way our world makes business transactions and manages health care problems.
Business transactions can be accomplished much faster and more accurately than they were done years ago. Instead of having to actually meet in the same location with a client or business partner, you can simply download a program, push a few buttons, and all of a sudden you are talking face to face with someone from across the world, or just across town, without having to get out of your chair. Mr. Winkle was understandably overwhelmed with how much things have changed. Sometimes, I even find myself overwhelmed with the forever changing technology and find it difficult to keep up with everything.
I must say, I agree 100% with Sir Ken Robinson, that it is very important to embrace one's creativity and to encourage creativity in children. He is without a doubt correct that our education systems discourage creativity; I have personally experienced this. Schools teach children that there is a right and wrong answer for everything and there is not. For example, having a multiple choice question on a test that begins with the phrase "in your opinion". Opinions are never wrong. Opinions can only be different. So, to ask a question like that and then tell the student they are wrong is absurd. It is very important to remind people, especially young people, that it is more than okay to think differently than the majority.
Robinson mentions that art's are at the bottom the curriculum in most education systems and he is very right. When schools have to make funding adjustments, the arts are the first to go. However, arts are just as important as your maths and sciences. Arts embrace a child's imagination and creativity and we really need to encourage those in our young people today.
Robinson points out a very valid fact that the majority of adults are so afraid of being wrong. We tend to conform to what is "right" or "normal" just to avoid being different or shamed. We need to start reminding people that different, is not wrong. Different is what get's us to where we are now compared to where we were twenty years ago. Because someone challenged opinions and thought differently, we have better technology and better medicine today. Many people could benefit from listening to Sir Ken Robinson's video on creativity. I think any teacher or teacher in training could benefit greatly from this and when I start teaching, I will, to the best of my ability, encourage imagination and creativity.
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Mr. Winkle Wakes by Mathew Needleman talks about how different our world is from just one hundred years ago. Not only has technology changed the way society's young people are educated, it has also greatly changed the way our world makes business transactions and manages health care problems.
Business transactions can be accomplished much faster and more accurately than they were done years ago. Instead of having to actually meet in the same location with a client or business partner, you can simply download a program, push a few buttons, and all of a sudden you are talking face to face with someone from across the world, or just across town, without having to get out of your chair. Mr. Winkle was understandably overwhelmed with how much things have changed. Sometimes, I even find myself overwhelmed with the forever changing technology and find it difficult to keep up with everything.
I must say, I agree 100% with Sir Ken Robinson, that it is very important to embrace one's creativity and to encourage creativity in children. He is without a doubt correct that our education systems discourage creativity; I have personally experienced this. Schools teach children that there is a right and wrong answer for everything and there is not. For example, having a multiple choice question on a test that begins with the phrase "in your opinion". Opinions are never wrong. Opinions can only be different. So, to ask a question like that and then tell the student they are wrong is absurd. It is very important to remind people, especially young people, that it is more than okay to think differently than the majority.
Robinson mentions that art's are at the bottom the curriculum in most education systems and he is very right. When schools have to make funding adjustments, the arts are the first to go. However, arts are just as important as your maths and sciences. Arts embrace a child's imagination and creativity and we really need to encourage those in our young people today.
Robinson points out a very valid fact that the majority of adults are so afraid of being wrong. We tend to conform to what is "right" or "normal" just to avoid being different or shamed. We need to start reminding people that different, is not wrong. Different is what get's us to where we are now compared to where we were twenty years ago. Because someone challenged opinions and thought differently, we have better technology and better medicine today. Many people could benefit from listening to Sir Ken Robinson's video on creativity. I think any teacher or teacher in training could benefit greatly from this and when I start teaching, I will, to the best of my ability, encourage imagination and creativity.
Creativity and imagination fall hand-in-hand. In his interview with Cecilia Gault, Sir Ken Robinson states that one of the "three myths of creativity" is that only certain people can be creative. I very much agree with him. Every single person is creative in different ways, with different things. Cecilia also asked Robinson how he defined intelligence. In my opinion, intelligence can be defined in so many different ways. All to often, people are categorized as "not intelligent" because they are not good with math, or science, or history. It is important for people to recognize art as a matter of intelligence as well. People are different and we all succeed at different things.
I agree with Sir Ken Robinson and Cecilia Gault that it is time for us to catch up with other countries educational success! We need to develop more ways to keep students in school to lower our drop out rates. We emphasize so much on failure and I think this factors into our countries drop out rate. Why do we punish a child so severely for falling behind? The child is always punished for a "failing" grade but is it entirely the students fault? Maybe the flaw is not always in the student, but maybe in some of the teaching habits our school systems have developed. Instead of shaming the student so much, maybe we, as teachers, can help develop better ways to teach them.
I agree with Sir Ken Robinson and Cecilia Gault that it is time for us to catch up with other countries educational success! We need to develop more ways to keep students in school to lower our drop out rates. We emphasize so much on failure and I think this factors into our countries drop out rate. Why do we punish a child so severely for falling behind? The child is always punished for a "failing" grade but is it entirely the students fault? Maybe the flaw is not always in the student, but maybe in some of the teaching habits our school systems have developed. Instead of shaming the student so much, maybe we, as teachers, can help develop better ways to teach them.
Vicki Davis makes a very good point that not all students can learn with just a pencil and paper. She is doing an amazing thing by exposing her students to a portion of the technological possibilities that are out there. She develops her lesson plans based on how ALL of her students learn and I think other teachers can learn from her. When you think about how technology is so greatly involved in young people's lives today, it only makes sense to embrace that and USE that technology to teach them.
Not only is she helping them learn better in the classroom, she is exposing them to other cultures and how other cultures learn by connecting them with other students all over the world. In my own personal experiences as a student, you always have the teachers who are dead set in their ways of teaching whether if clicks with the students or not. I think it is important to do your best to fulfill the learning needs of as many students as possible. A good teacher wants his or her students to succeed and these days, that involves using technology!
