Blog Post 4

Scott McLeod: Don't teach your kids this stuff, Please?

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This is a blog post by Dr. Scott McLeod, an active and passionate supporter of technology in education. An Educational Administrator at Iowa State University and the director for the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), his opinions carry a lot weight in the education world.

In his post Dr. McLeod poetically outlines the many places where technologically conservative school boards, teachers, and parents restrict children's access to the technology that is shaping our future. It's very true that if children are not allowed to social network, blog, tweet or access the growing cloud of data that is the internet, they will be left behind, and completely lost in the world of tomorrow. Frankly, I don't see where anyone can hope to be successful in the world today without a basic understanding of these things. More, and more businesses are googling you before you even step foot into their office for an interview. What does that say for kids raised in conservative school systems who are not even allowed to freely surf the internet and are not taught what an RSS is?

"The iSchool initiative" by Travis Allan

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In this video Travis proposes a radical solution to one of the biggest problems affecting school systems nationwide, the budget. He explains how buying iPod Touchs for every student and teacher would actually save money and improve learning. By using specially designed apps for the iPod Touch, Travis says book, calculator, map, and printing expenses could be avoided and schools could save thousands of dollars.

Travis's idea is exciting and revolutionary, but it has many flaws. Travis claims that his idea could save school systems over $600 a student while only spending $150 a student. The problem is that most of the items he lists as savings are items that only have to be replaced once every six years or more, while every generation of students would have to have a new iPod. Maps, calculators, books, and projectors last years before becoming outdated or warn out, and when damaged (excluding projectors which are used solely by teachers anyway) are relatively inexpensive, but children are know to break cellphones, gameboys and any small electronics they're given, which means even more $150 iPods. Finally, ignoring all the cost problems, every advantage he gave for the iPod Touch could probably be done better by providing students with netbook computers.

AARP's "Lost Generation"

This was actually a really cool video, but the idea of the whole world going down a destructive spiral into a wasteland self-centered society unless we change it has been around for a long time though. Aldous Huxley was scared of it in 1932, and we're still scared of it in 2010. It's laughable to think about the world of Huxley's day and the world of today as the same, but it's remarkable how the problems are still the same. We all have to do our part to save the world, but we can't live in fear of where we're headed, because we've made it 78 years without crashing. The biggest question I actually get out of this is "What was AARP's agenda here?". This video was obviously not for retired persons, so I have to assume they are trying to ask the youth to preserve the ideals that they themselves lived by.

Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir

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This video is interesting, but the idea is not actually all that new to me. With the easy of video sharing on YouTube it's no surprise that hundreds of people could gather and submit their small part of a global symphony. I would actually like to share a video I find far more impressive. "'The Internet Symphony' Global Mash Up" is a video where a group of artists, without knowing, contributed to a piece simply by posting their solo performance on YouTube. Then another artist gathered these assorted video's and created his\her own full orchestra symphony. It's amazing what volumes of works are submitted to YouTube everyday and how someone anywhere in the world can find your performance and take out of it something completely different than anything you had intended.