Thursday, January 28, 2010

week 3

Media Literacy/Little Kids... Big Potential

I'm in shock. These kids are amazing learners. I wasn't using the internet regularly until i was about 16. Before that i could get lost on the internet. It's a vast space of knowledge that can easily get a 1st grader confused and lost, but these students know enough to do what they need to do and stay on track.

The best part is they seem to enjoy it. I didn't learn how to blog until a few weeks ago and these children are already doing it! I feel as if I'm behind. How can i catch up to people who are already years ahead of me? Am i ready to teach children that already know more than me? I think so. I'm prepared to learn from my future students.


iPhone used by 1 Year Old Baby

Wow! This reminds me of my step brother's little boy Eli. My step brother Carl has an iPhone and is very much into technology. Eli loves to play with his daddy's iPhone. The technology is not hard to use once one learns how to use it. Starting at that young of an age will increase a child's learning ability. It stimulates the mind.

Pod casts

Some of the pod casts i listened to (randomly selected) were informative. Those were the main pod casts I took notes about. Although some were not so helpful, this assignment, as a whole, was very helpful. I thought we would just record some stuff and be done with it. Apparently I was wrong.

Before i get into my main point I would like to say that I find it very interesting that teachers are using tutorial style pod casts to teach and learn about technology and how to use it. This type of learning should be used more frequently in today's classrooms.


There is a lot more to creating a successful pod cast than just sitting down and recording a random topic. First, one must choose a topic he or she is interested in or the student is headed for what i believe to be absolute failure. Dan Schmit said that there are not as many student pod casts as he expected.


His pod cast, "The Medium is NOT the Message", was my favorite pod cast i heard. I would say it helped me the most. If i wouldn't have listened to it I would have been one of those students that does a pod cast simply just to create it because that was the assignment. I wouldn't have chosen a topic I was deeply interested in. I would have just picked one and said, "Well this will do".


In my pod cast i will try my best to stay away from lengthy introductions. I will get to the point on a topic I am highly interested in and take my presentation further than the technical pieces of the pod cast its self. I would like to hold an "extended academic conversation", as Schmit put it.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Matt, I feel the same way about how smart these kids are using technology in the classroom. They started using technology at a much younger age compared to me. I was about 14 or 15 years old when my family finally got a family computer. The baby using the Iphone also caught my eye. My girlfriend has a sister that bought an Iphone for her baby to use as a toy. I found that a little extreme. But if she wants to waste that much money on a baby toy she can.
    I appears to had a fun time listening to all the different podcasts. I myself found some to be more enjoyable than others. I liked the method a teacher used to apply podcasts in the classroom. This teacher taught a lecture and afterward choose random students into his office. These students would discuss the lecture with each other while the conversation was recorded. The teacher would use this conversation as a podcast for his entire class.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Matt,

    You made a great point about being open to learning from your students. We as teachers need to move away from the sage on the stage and become learning partners with our students as we move forward.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree about the podcast man. It has to be something interesting or it just becomes another assignment. And I wonder if I am ready to teach kids that no more about technology then me. It will be a learning for quite awhile to catch up to some of them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree I think technology has come so far to where everyone is finding some way to interact.

    ReplyDelete