@TheJLV

This post is about the Twitter user Jose Vilson. He is a teacher from New York that posts about education and social inequality. He often posts about the inequality of "bad" schools and "good" schools. He emphasizes that this divide in quality of schools comes down to funding. He offers some solutions to problem such as fundraising, but recognizes that the solution will probably come from a higher source. What Mr. Vilson posts about is an area I have a lot of passion about. The fact that income inequality gets worse every year is maybe the most difficult problem America faces. Mr. Vilson also recently was featured on a NPR article about what makes a great teacher. NPR Article This article is great for aspiring teachers preparing to go into education. I learned a lot about what to expect and what to emulate when I get my first classroom.

Twitter post

I am following a Twitter-er-er-er named Lyn Hilt (@lynhilt). She is a former K-6 principal who now works as an instructional technology integrator for her district. She has over 16k followers on Twitter and she posts fairly regularly. As her job title suggests, she posts often about technology and its uses in the classroom, but she also branches out and talks about general education as well. Many of her posts involve retweeting various articles relating to education.

One cause that she has retweeted and is now supporting is #internet4schools. This is a movement about getting better internet access to our schools. They make the case that schools have the same internet access as a everyday home. If 200+ people tried to connect to your wifi all at once there would be problems, which is the case in many schools. I know from experience observing in Atlantic City when they take out the chromebooks, that the internet goes incredibly slow for the students. This causes frustration, and they do not get as excited to use the chromebooks because of it. In a few weeks the FCC will be voting on whether to expand broadband services to all schools.  So this hashtag trend is trying to force the FCC's hand and vote yes on the issue.

Connected Learning

I agree with the author that there has been an overreaction to the negative effects of social media. I agree that there is value in face-to-face interaction, but I don't think it is going away. I am in my mid-20's and rarely use social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr) for communicating to my friends. I still do the majority of communicating face-to-face or through texting. Now I know this may be anecdotal evidence, but I would not be surprised if that's how it was for the majority of the populating that is my age.  I agree with their sentiment that social media does not take away from talking face-to-face, but instead takes away from alone time.

I enjoyed this article because it does not look down on change. It takes a step back and realizes just because the way people use information is changing, it doesn't mean that it is for the worse. I especially liked the part about how the way people read has changed. The author points out that scanning passages may have overtaken close reading as the preferred way to read. Now normally that idea would be painted in a negative light, but here the author just says what is happening. Because there is so much more information out there, and it is all readily accessible the way people consume information had to adapt. From a video in class we heard that all of human knowledge is rapidly multiplying. It shouldn't be looked down upon to try and skim information to find the relevant bits that interest you.

The change in how people consume information should be noticed and used by teachers. It is important to know that their students take in information much differently than they did at that age. Teachers need to be adaptable to this changing landscape and try to turn it in their favor.

Reading Film: The Story of Movies

This curriculum they showed was very interesting. I would not mind to take a class like this. It looks like it is very engaging and offers more than just spending 2 hours watching a movie. The science experiments done with the light teaches more than just movie tricks, but it also teaches about light in general. I think it has value for the students to learn how movies are made and what the different elements elicit what response. I am sure this is the kind of class that George Lucas would prefer to take place just as often as a math class. However, I still feel that this class works better as a special class in elementary or an elective in middle/high schools. This class is perfect for students who want to go into tv/movie production.

Life on the Screen: Visual Literacy in Education

I am a huge fan of George Lucas' work. From Star Wars to Indiana Jones, he is/was a creative genius. (I will not count the new Star Wars or Indiana Jones against him.) However, I do not agree with his assessment of education. I feel he puts too much value in the graphic arts and music. Obviously, they are very important, but this article places them at the same level as language arts and math. These subjects are more important because they are used in everyday life. You need to learn how to create a complete sentence way more than you need to know how to create a musical piece. There are only a limited amount of fields that music and graphic arts are used in, but almost every field of work uses language arts. In most schools, students already have the option to explore these more arts oriented classes if they would like. This is the way I believe it should stay, as there is already a ton to teach in school without adding those subjects as well.

Why Some Schools Are Selling All Their iPads

When I read the title to this article, I thought it would have been about the iPad "experiment" failing. However, this article is more about the different choices available to schools than it is anti-iPad. There were some strategies I disagreed with in regards to the schools. For one, Los Angelas schools were giving the students a choice if they wanted an iPad or laptop. This makes it difficult for teachers. iPads and laptops are very incompatible. If there is a classroom full of students and they all have different devices, it would be impossible for a teacher to use those devices for anything but word processing. The same problem arises in the schools that are implementing 'Bring your own device'. If a school wants to join the world of interactive learning, they should be uniform in their device choices. Personally, if the choice was between a chromebook and an iPad for a classroom, I'd choose the chromebook. It is cheaper, and it is a lot more practical. However, if I was teacher younger children, I would go for the iPad. Word processing would not be as important in lower grades and the apps would be much more engaging and easier to use than anything on a chromebook.

Why some schools...

What Will It Take for iPads to Upend Teaching and Learning?

This post showed a positive example of a school utilizing iPads in the classroom. After reading this article it is easy to be excited about the possibilities of using iPads. If I am lucky to get into a school that has the funding to have an iPad for every student, I would be sure to utilize that tool. From the article you can see that the kids are much more engaged when using the iPad. Engagement is a precious thing to achieve.  For ESL, where I plan to end up, engagement like this will be invaluable. If I am having trouble communicating with a student, the iPad should make it a lot easier to do so.

What will it take...