Jen

Technology in Education Cartoon
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Dewey and Education Cartoon
media type="custom" key="5310231" This cartoon depicts the lack of communication and a common understanding in our formal education system. According to Dewey, "the communication which insures participation in a common understanding is one which secures similar emotional and intellectual dispositions – like ways of responding to expectations are requirements.” In today’s schools, many teachers and administrators do not or cannot keep up with the technology that is part of our children’s daily lives. This results in a disconnect between how material is taught in the classroom and what children are actually exposed to in society. Therefore, a breakdown in communication and a common understanding of expectations is occurring between today’s older and younger generations. In addition, the rapid pace of technological development, the youth’s ability to incorporate it, and the adult’s inability to keep up with it, is causing the gap in communication and common understandings to widen. Dewey tells us that “through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric” is made possible. But our society today is not constantly reweaving. It is, instead, starting a whole new quilt.

Bloom's Analysis
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My analysis is based mainly on my high school years, as I don't remember a lot of the specifics regarding how I was engaged in learning in my earlier years. As you can see, much of my time was spent in remembering and understanding. This happened in most of my social studies, science, and math classes. The teaching style was teacher centered with the students giving back information on homework, quizzes, and tests. However, due to my participation in advanced English courses as well as band and chorus, I also had the opportunity to spend time in applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Band and chorus were a large part of my high school days, which I thought fell under applying because we played instruments and sang music through the application of our knowledge of musical concepts and elements. In regard to analyzing and evaluating, my teachers in advanced English involved us quite often in the dissection of literary works and their authors. We also had to do an in depth literary analysis of a specific author during my senior year. The creating portion of my learning took place during my photography class and the development of my senior project. In my photography class, after learning about the fundamentals of picture taking, we took and developed our own pictures. While taking and developing the pictures, we played with different techniques that changed the final product. I consider this creation because we created our pictures through experimenting with different photo taking and developing techniques. Finally, every senior in our high school was required to complete a senior project in order to graduate, which was designed and implemented by the individual student with assistance as needed from an advisor. This project usually took the duration of the student's senior year to complete and was a unique creation by the student that related to his or her career aspirations. Because of my involvement in advanced courses and additional school programs, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to move beyond remembering and understanding. However, this style of learning should not be reserved for the advanced and involved students, but for every student regardless of their level or involvement. In fact, I would think that students in the non-advanced classes would advance much more quickly if they were given the opportunity to be involved in the higher levels of learning.

Technology and Learning
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My Worldle represents the idea that children today move fast with the help of technology. They connect fast, type fast, talk fast, search fast, and find fast.  They have instant access to everything they ever wanted to know and more from some of the most reliable sources. Yet, educators continue to view these technologies as a closed door rather than an open window. And we are losing our children because of this. If we will only open the window of technology in our classrooms and allow children to explore in the best way they know how, our children will soar above the mountains rather than hover above the ground.

Teacher Tube Video: Math Class Rap
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Vodcast
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