Starting the Conversation!

     Welcome to my blog! I recently took a Staff College course entitled ""Shift Happens: Gloablization and Preparing Our Students for the 21st Century." As a part of our final project, I decided to share some of the information I came across with you all and invite you to join the discussion. Below I will post links to two versions of a video called "Did You Know" which provide some startling facts regarding the changes occurring in the world that we are preparing our students for. It certainly raises my awareness level of the importance of our role in teaching our students 21st century skills to prepare them for the global world they will be entering. After watching, please feel free to respond to a few of the questions below to help get the conversation started. I will also share my answers to a few of the questions.

Did You Know? version 4.0

Did You Know? version 3.0

Video Reponse Questions:

• What are your initial reactions to what you saw in the presentation?
• How are these changes manifesting themselves in your personal lives? professional lives?
• What do we think it means to prepare students for the 21st century? What skills do students need to survive and thrive in this new era?
• What implications does this have for our current way of doing things?
• Do we need to change? If so, how?
• How do we get from here to there?
• What challenges must we overcome as we move forward?
• What supports will we need as we move forward?
• What kind of training will we need to move forward?
• What kind of commitments will we need to make (with each other, our students, and our community) to move forward?
• Who's scared? Why?
• What will we do next? What are some concrete actions that we can take in the near future?
• Is it possible for a teacher to be an excellent teacher if he/she does not use technology?
• Which version of the video do you prefer and why?

A few of my responses:

What are your initial reactions to what you saw in the presentation?
I found the video to be quite enlightening, yet at the same time, a bit alarming. It seems crazy to think that by the 3rd year of a four year technical degree, half of what one learned in their first year is out of date. Schooling is so expensive that it's mind boggling to think that students will be spending money to learn information that will one day be useless. Watching the video also made me realize that although we have constantly been seeing changes and advances in technology over the years, as the year goes by, it seems the advances come more and more rapidly and they are more widespread. We are responsible for preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet using technologies that aren't invented yet--WOW!! That is a BIG responsibility and it is somewhat overwhelming to think about how we can practically do that!

How are these changes manifesting themselves in your personal lives? professional lives?
Everywhere you look, you can see these changes. I know that personally, technology functions as a great tool for me to stay in communication with family and friends from all over the country. It has even allowed me to find old friends and rekindle relationships. I agree that at times it the facebook posts, text messages, and e-mail can become a bit impersonal, but if one makes an effort to make phone calls and have face to face encounters as well, the relationship can still be very meaningful and the technology then functions as a tool to aid in the relationship. So technology can hinder real human interaction, but only if you let it. In my professional life, technology has certainly added convenience. As I applied for jobs this fall, I was able to do most of my applications online, uploading documents rather than having to print and send hard copies. Searching for jobs was also much easier than it would have been years ago. Since this district places a strong emphasis on technologically, I have learned how to use several programs which I was previously unfamiliar with. The online lesson planning has been great because I have been easily able to share lesson plans with the full time music teachers to get ideas from them and also have them give me advice on the lessons I write. As a new teacher, this is an invaluable tool for me.

Is it possible for a teacher to be an excellent teacher if he/she does not use technology?
In this day and age, I do not think so. Students need to be exposed to technology because their lives are filled with it and they will become more and more inundated with technology as they get older. Technology is also a great resource for learning and students should not be deprived of this experience. Often technology can help make the learning more relevant or more interesting to the students and can foster a greater amount of learning and can aid in better information retainment. Teachers who do not incorporate technology into their teaching at all are living in the past and are not moving forward. If our job as teachers is to prepare students for the future, which is technology driven, then we need to set an example ourselves.