8/12/10

Today in class we watch two shorts clips from Sir Ken Robinson videos Bring on the Learning Revolution and School Kills Creativity.  I'm hoping to find the time after work tonight to watch the entire videos because what I have see so far is pretty insightful.  Sir Ken brings up the point that education today is becoming industrialized when it needs to be customized.  I can only agree with that belief.   After hearing about the many standardized tests the US has and having been put through several pre-made worksheets throughout my own educational career, how can anyone disagree with that?  What have I seen of the video has reminded me of my developing intention to ensure that each of my future students have a unique educational experience.  Right now, this intention is still in the works, for I don't quite yet have a clear picture of how I can achieve that.  In the closing of one of his videos, Sir Ken recites a poem by W.B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, which is beautiful, and sums up his talk by reminding his audience that today's children are spreading their dreams at our feet, and that we ourselves should tread softly.  What a powerful ending! These videos have given much to think and write about not only in this blog, but also in my other two blogs, so be prepared for the overlap!

The other video we watched, RSA Animate, was also pretty interesting.  It wasn't talking specifically about education but, rather, motivation. Specifically, the video talked about Dan Pink's research in motivation. The main message, that larger rewards are not necessarily more effective in motivating cognitive work in humans, can be easily related to education.  I have been learning earlier this summer that a teacher can hurt the chances of a student by making the grade the most important factor of the class.  When I am a teacher, I hope to present my subject in such a way that the students want to explore and learn for their own sakes, not for the sake of their parents' expectations.  I bet there are some who would call me an idealist.  Maybe.

We also spent some time today looking up digital storytelling.  This is a very interesting concept; I hope that I can feel comfortable enough with it to promote its use in the future.  We found some very interesting sites, and some of my favorites will be listed below.  Here, I will try to embed the site that I found, it isn't as useful as the others, but it does have some good background information about digital storytelling.

Digital Storytelling

Uploaded by Jolandra on WiZiQ Tutorials

Hope that works.  Here are a couple of links:


The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

and also...

DigiTales: The Art of Telling Digital Stories

More than one of my classmates found these two sites and they are pretty good.

I managed to make a short video, myself.  It isn't very good, but I do like the site I used to make it!