Blog Assignment 3

I am going to apologize in advance for how ranty this post gets, I got really worked up and excited and could hardly type.

A Vision of Students Today
I enjoyed this video it was very entertaining. I do find humorous that it was done by a cultural anthropology class as that was my first really intensive college course. In the course I had to read eleven books, two of which could not be purchased physically and were E-books of two separate formats requiring different reading programs to read, one which had to verify you had the rights online each time you opened it. I have to say it doesn't reflect my college experience but I feel that is mostly because I have not had the usual college experience because I don't necessarily do things the usual way. I attended my first college course as a junior in high school, I petitioned for a free period at the end of the day with the assistance of one of the schools counselors who was a friend of the family and very kind, I then contacted the local college with the help of my mother explaining that I wanted to take Japanese and since it was not offer by any high school in the city I wanted to take it there. I applied like any other college student but they did  have to make a special case since I had not graduated highs school yet and I was currently enrolled at a community college for duel credit courses on top of a correspondence course. This was my first real college course, it was a small class of 12. My teacher, Yuki Kondo, knew my name and situation from day one. By the end of the first semester of the class we had gotten along quite well and she gave me two childrens books to practice my reading skills with. This is just a starting example, I have often been a part of small intimate classes that have been a huge advantage to me as a student. I read my books and I study hard, I go to class and I sleep when I can I try not to waste too much time doing other things.
I listen to music, I watch movies, I write to family, I read the news, I go to work,  but no matter what it's all secondary to my school work.
It's really hard to address everything brought up in this film, it really hits on a lot. It does get at the heart of a lot of the problems with college life. We waste time, we're kids, and the things the universities are doing don't necessarily help. Our books are expensive and often useless, many of us pay for things we never even consider using in our tuition, and we have teachers that sometimes seem to want to be there less than the students which only makes their classes worse. I mean, I have personally only been to the schools library a handful of times. I went once for a course I was taking outside of my regular classes, once to take pictures off the top floor, once to rent movies, and once to check out some copies of Bukowski. I've been to the rec center here twice, it's really just out of the way for me.  It's what is expected of college though, you spend a lot of money to learn some things; including bad habits.
College is a balancing act that's hard to stay on top of, it's not that anybody wants to flunk out. We have our social lives, class lives, study habits, and bad habits. Some times you just need a break, some times you don't but take it anyway. It's the first time in many peoples lives when some people are presented with real freedom to do as they please and it gets the better of them. Not only that but it's the flood of tech, we're surrounded by distractions at every turn. Social networking, streaming video, news sites, reddit, digg, tumblr, twitter, facebook, hulu, gossip, pictures,etc. Is it really any surprise that some people get lost in the tide? I'm ranting aren't I, I apologize.

It's Not About Technology
 That's really the heart of the matter isn't it? Putting the cart before the horse so to speak. We can't expect to make and implement great advances while assuming those who will use those great advances are automatically ready to go. We have to teach those who teach, the ones that are set in their way and pushing the same old stone up the hill only to have roll back down again.
 We can't as educators think, "oh, put this in the class room and kids will learn on their own because of it." We must develop our own learning skills so we can adapt to each new group of individuals that steps into our classrooms and not start spinning our tires as soon as something new comes a long. It is not an automatic thing that comes with being a teacher. We must be able to ADAPT or when tech changes on us we will become exactly the kind of teacher we don't like right now using outdated methods. If you can't teach with current technology what makes you think advanced technology is going to help. When was the last time you encountered a problem and said, "Hey, let's make this a bit more complicated then I'll get it."

Is it Okay to be Technologically Illiterate
 I LOVE THIS POST! Ah, yeah.
The self argument, the points from both fisch and freedman. The internal debate one has to deal with when thinking about issues such as this. This almost throws back to my little rant back on "Did you know", which was actually a bit longer originally. When dealing with the question of technological literacy it can be so terribly difficult to pick a side. When you grow up using tech it's hard to take that step back and realize maybe not everyone is as savvy as you or your not as savvy as you think. You run into people who are proud of their own shortcomings and you have to think to yourself "Why?"
 It's acceptable to not know certain things in society, but why? I myself try to gain as much knowledge as possible and sometimes I can be a strange cat. I have trouble looking at other people who say, "Oh, that's just not me." without feeling like I have a strange look on my face. There certainly are skills that are perfectly acceptable not to know but it's because they are not commonplace in society, neurosurgery for example. As future educators I can't stress this point enough. You can't take what you learn from classes like EDM310 and just drop it. We're not only learning to use technology we are learning the skills to learn future technology to stay on top of our game.


I like that he brought up math too, that hit me in the heart. I've dealt with that exact problem loads of times, not so much with parents of my students but just people in general. I'm going to come back to this some other time, believe me I like this post and I have had an idea that I think I can tie this into rather nicely.The double edge sword of tech, look forward to hearing about it and me soon.


Gary's Social Media Count
Ack, this whole assignment is too exciting I can't contain myself. I really must write the post I want to this week. I can't squeeze everything I want to say in one blog.
Technological growth much like scientific growth is exponential, as soon as one advancement is made it opens the door for even more advancement. The more people working on it the more it grows and the more it grows the more people it draws in to work on it.
We are constantly flooded with information, it's the state of the world we live in. You don't even have to leave your bed for it to happen.
It is certainly not uncommon for someone of our age bracket to use social media. I'm sure many students in our class use things like facebook, a few might even have tumblrs, and a handful use sites like delicious, reddit, and digg. Those who use tools like this are a bit more prepared to handle the amount of information hitting us in this class, for others it's complete culture shock. There are so many ways for anyone to get out and recieve information in modern society that it's ridiculous. You have to be able to adapt to it and know how to filter through all this information without getting overloaded and bogged down by the useless time wasters. There are so many tools at our disposal and we must constantly be prepared to learn how to utilize them, if there is one lesson my father has tried to teach me it's this: ALWAYS be prepared to learn and you'll never stop. He's set in his ways but has slowly been learning about technology not because he has to but because he wants to. He sent his first email two days ago and I found it rather inspirational.