Instagram I Love YouCasey Neistat made a video where he talks about his favorite social media application, Instagram. Instagram is an application where you can share different pictures or videos with your friends. Just like we have Instagram, we also have Twitter and Facebook. Neistat mentions that Twitter is a great place to connect with people but you are limited to what you can share, down to 140 characters. Facebook has now just become a place where people post nonsense stuff and sometimes you do not even know or remember who you have as friends. One thing that Neistat said when he was explaining his love for Instagram was that each person can create a theme about what they want their page to be and express that theme with a variety of pictures and videos. Mostly everyone uses it to post about certain moments of their lives, using it like a digital photo album.
Now, how does this video relate to our classrooms? Well, one thing I loved and I think can be applied to our classrooms is that every one can create their theme. In my classrooms I see how every student is unique and how each one brings something different to the classroom. Encouraging kids to be themselves is like asking them to create their theme when using Instagram. This application can also be incorporated into the classroom. One way that I as a teacher could use this could be to create a class page and record moments of the class and post them, especially when we do a cool project that we want to show off. In a math classroom, due to Common Core, students are now asked to discover each topic on their own. If I were to get a student who solved something in a new way or awesome way, their work could also be posted for parents and other students to see. Just like teachers display their students' work all around their classroom they could do the same but posting it on social media. I think that if my students saw that I do not run away from technology or social media, it would give them something that they could relate to and know that I encourage the use of social media and apply it to our classroom. Caseyneistat. "Instagram I Love You." YouTube. YouTube, 02 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2016
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A few ideas (Visions of Students) The video above was created by Michael Wesch from Kansas University. This video is one that has no one standing in front of an audience giving a talk. The video is made up of different pictures, videos and the lives of different students. All these students describe what it means to be in school and express their feelings towards what needs to be changed. The school system was created so that the teacher was the one doing all the teaching and students would just listen, copy notes, practice work and then get tested. Sometimes it even felt that our schools were creating robots and that the only opinion that mattered was that of the instructor. Students were not allowed to be creative and had to do things the way the school wanted them to do. However we now are presented with all these advances of technology and both schools and educators need to change things up so that our students are being successful both in school and outside of school.
Students are now able to just Google a problem and most likely find the answers out there. One thing that teachers should work towards is creating a classroom where the students are engaged and where the problems can relate to them. With this we will have students excited to learn and to participate in class. In the video a clip of an article was shown that said "5,000 hours of their lives are spent reading, 10,000 are spent playing video games and 20,000 hours are spent watching TV". This is a perfect example of how much time students spend using different form of technology. Yes, reading is still crucial in schools but create tasks where the reading can be either related to their lives or a project that they can use the technology that they love to use. Shifting our methods to adapt to these technology natives will help get students back into caring about school. We have to encourage kids to be creative and attempt problems in whatever way they want instead of shutting them down when they have ideas and causing them to be afraid to be themselves. As a future educator, I will make sure that all of my students leave my classroom knowing that their ideas are important and have meaning. Michael Wesch. (2011, Jun 18). "a few ideas..." (Visions of Students Today). YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/jrXpitAlva0?list=PLbRLdW37G3oMquOaC-HeUIt6CWk-FzaGp Hackschooling makes me happyLogan LaPlante was a 13 year old boy when he was invited to do a TedTalk. This video was interesting first of all because educators do not always get the chance to hear from young people and what they are feeling in their lives.
Logan based his talk on what the real answer from every kid should be when they are asked "What do you want to be when you grow up?". I had never stopped and thought about how important this question really is to a child and what it actually means to them. As adults when we ask a child this we want an answer like an astronaut, a doctor, an architect or a police officer because we want kids to lean towards something that will help them make a living. However, Logan says that want kids really want is to learn how to make a life. When he was asked that same question, his answer was "I just want to be healthy and happy." but that is not the answer we are expecting. In our schools we are so focused on teaching kids how to learn math and science to help them make a living when they grow up. Students are more focused on being happy and healthy and not being bullied by anyone at school. So why can't we change things in our classrooms so that our basis in teaching comes from teaching kids how to be happy and healthy? When he was nine years old Logan's mom took him out of the traditional school because she was worried what he was actually learning. She wanted him to learn how to be happy and healthy but at the same time learning math and science and history. With him not being in the traditional school he got to write about things he liked, not something the teacher wanted him to, learn math and science by experimenting with things related to skiing since he loved skiing. With him having the freedom to learn the main subjects however he wanted he was also getting the opportunity to learn how to be healthy and happy. I see this more often in classrooms now than before where teachers are trying to incorporate more projects into their classrooms and move away from the traditional classroom setting. With continuing to doing this and giving students the freedom to choose how they want to learn the material, we are also making the shift to teaching students how to be healthy and happy, how to make a life not a living. LaPlante, Logan [Tedx Talks] (2013, February 12). Hackschooling makes me happy. [YouTube] Retrievedfrom https://www.youtube.com/watchv=h11u3vtcpaY&index=3&list=PLbRLdW37G3oMquOaC-HeUIt6CWk-FzaGp Dr. Michael West did a Ted talk where he talked about getting students from knowledgeable to knowledge-able. The talk focused on technology in the beginning and the big role that it plays in our lives now, especially in our students lives. If we think back to five or six years, the tools that students have today were not available for us. However, because of all the tools that are out there across the world, students are able to connect and collaborate easier with whoever they want. Just like when the TV was introduced and everything in people's home shifted towards the TV, now everything is shifting towards the internet. Dr. West was inspired by his own college students who after a survey they gave responses that no teacher wants to hear and it was mainly because in schools we focus so much on what students need to know for the test in class instead of what they need to know for the real test that is called life. He says that it is ridiculously easy for students connect, organize, share, collect and collaborate but with the use of technology. Our goal as teachers should be to get students to do all these things but in real life, working with one another in person but still with the use of the internet.
Getting students to be knowledge-able is not something that as educators we can get them to do from one day to the next, it takes practice. By guiding them and presenting them with real world problems or problems that us, teachers, do not have the answers to as well we can help them create meaning to what they need to learn. Dr. West gave an example about four people from Kenya in 2007 that worked together to create an application where anyone could report an incident where they were, it would get mapped and others would be notified. Everyone now had the chance to be a real life reporter and when the incident in Haiti occurred three years, these people gave it a way and students from Tufts university adapted it so that it could be used in Haiti so that people could report any missing persons or anyone that was found and his or her family members would be able to find them. This example shows how people can collaborate across the world since they had a problem that had meaning for them. One of my goals as an educator will be to create meaning for my students and with that present them with the opportunity to use any tools that they want to solve it. Wesch, M. (2010, October 12). From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeaAHv4UTI8 |
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