EdTech Talk #170

I poked around the archives a little bit but ended up going with the latest installment of the show because of the subject of cyber bullying. It has been in the news often, most recently with the student from Rutgers. The group discussed how Netiquette is being taught to students at a young age and they even shared websites that can help students, parents and teachers. One host also made the point that bullying has gone on through out the ages, but at the very least cyber bullying leaves a wake of proof.

When I started this assignment, I sat with my notebook and pen and began to listen ready to take notes. But as professor Dave shared in class, it is great just to have on in the background so I also did my laundry as well. I feel like I would tune in regularly as I am already a huge talk radio person and I liked the hosts immediately. I love how Dave calls twitter "the twitter."

Anyway, some things I learned while listening to the program was that I need to pay more attention to current events with regard to public education. I've heard snip-its of what's going on with that NBC summit, but really have no idea about the bigger picture. I've seen a few documentaries  about education, one called the American Teen and the other called the First Year which is about the first year of teaching in an LA school system. I'm excited to see Waiting for Superman, but like most of these types of film I do realize that it can be a bit skewed.

The subject of standardized tests made a brief appearance on the show and my thoughts are this. They are not just for student evaluation. Tests come up for every thing. Driver's Ed? Pass a written test. Law School? LSAT. Teaching? PRAXIS or MTEL. Grad School? GRE. It goes on and on and I used to tell my students just that. We're preparing you for all the other little tests you may take through out life.

The guest host shared some information about technology that I found interesting. Here I am all proud that I can work around most applications when it comes to computers and I'm excited to share new things with students but he pointed out that it's still not tackling higher level thinking like programing would. So, I always thought that about power point, (nothing about that app impresses me) but he raised a valid point. That jobs involving the simplest of programming are being outsourced and we as a nation could be losing our tech edge. He also said programming is hardly offered but would really foster creativity and higher level thinking. This could be used in place of things like trig and calculus to demonstrate these higher levels of thought and problem solving abilities. On the bright side, students do take initiative to learn computer languages and we as teachers can always instill the value of being scholarly and helping the student find the tools they need to learn the things they want. One of those tools being the open course  website Host Dave spoke about.