Can we meet somewhere in the middle?

A recent NewYork Times article about The Waldorf School in Los Altos, CA explained that the kids in this K-12 private school do not use any forms of technology in their classrooms. Many big names on the Internet send their kids to The Waldorf School, but according Alan Eagle, who works for Google, "his daughter, a fifth grader, “doesn’t know how to use Google,” and his son is just learning." Parents and teachers are trying to justify they decision not to use technology, by saying, “At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older.”. I do not think that this is the case now, we've all seen our grandparents and even our parents struggle to do simple Google searches, because they have not grown up with the technology that we as 21st century students have. To me, technology is the wave of the future, so students who are not using technology in the classroom will eventually suffer in the real world, and be stuck behind those of us who can type a paper or do a Google search with our eyes closed. Here at Burlington High School, the iPad program has been good, having a hand held device on us at all times makes it easy to learn more than what a text book can tell us, and there truly is a helpful app for everything. I do think that our school is way ahead of the game and a compromise could be the best bet, maybe not every student needs a device on them at all times, but students should know how to navigate the web and perform simple tasks even when they are just in elementary school. 

A Case of Social Media Gone Wrong...

As many people already know, Tyler Clementi committed suicide over a year ago, after videos and chat threads that he created went viral, thanks to an unknown source. Tyler, who was openly gay, was made fun of by fellow students at Rutgers University. Soon after Tyler filed a complaint with the school, he took his own life, by jumping off of the George Washington Bridge. Tyler was bullied to the point of suicide because of what he put on social media sites and also because of the "creeping" that other students did on him. We can only hope that instances like this never happen again.

The Independent Project

I give a lot of credit to the students who worked on the Independent Project, to create their own school, where they could learn by themselves on their own time. I like the idea of learning useful information, but I do not think that it would be for me, because I don't have the will power to focus on learning new things.

While we watched the video online, we were also supposed to be using a back channel on Twitter to put all of our thoughts together. I am new to Twitter and I am not a fan of it. I found that it was hard to focus on watching the video and responding to Tweets at the same time. I also feel like Twitter is not very personal, it would have been just as easy, if not easier, for our classroom to have a discussion on the video after we watched it. I would have preferred talking "face-to-face" with the rest of the class, than using Twitter.

On the other hand, I can see why Twitter would be used on a larger scale, to interact with people in other towns and states, it's just not right for me.

A Filter to Our Wants?

In the recent TED talk, our class watched, called Filter Bubbles, Eli Pariser talked about how searches these days are filtered to what we want to see, instead of the most prevalent information. Based on pervious searches and the links that were chosen, websites like Google and Facebook, pick certain links that they believe relate to what we are looking for. Eric Schmidt, from Google, claims, "It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them." I think that is true already, Facebook only shows information or news from people who we show interest in, and on Google, the top searches are based off of pervious searches and our current location. I think that this is promoting laziness in a sense, because most of the time the information that we are searching for is only one click away. These days we don't need to search all over the web for information, most of it is on our home screen.

Another School Filled with iPads

The first school in Delaware to give their students iPads is the Delmarva Christian High School. The school decided to use iPads in the classroom, as a way to cut back on paper and to make high school more interactive and fun. So far, teachers at Delmarva seem to really like the iPads in the class room and they love that students can get information quickly from their seats. Delmarva has paired up with three other Christian schools using iPads, to share information and work together to learn.

I think that it is great that schools are using iPads in classrooms to save paper and provide the modern conveniences that students and teachers are used to at home. This is the wave of the future and I am glad that schools are finally accepting technology in the classroom

Colleges Can Creep on us?!?

Thanks to the help of the new Student Recruitment Manager, SRM, from TargetX, colleges can now go  and find out what their perspective students are thinking and doing when they post on social networking web sites.
I am not in favor of potential colleges being able to see what I put on the web, but I do think that it is the wave of the future and we should just get used to it. Once something is on the Internet, it is there for ever, for everyone to see and that is a scary thought. For a fear that information may be misconstrued, or misread, I do not want colleges to base their decision on me off of what they see online. I will definitely be more careful and clear about what I post on Facebook and other social networking sites, but if colleges really want to read about me and my opinions, then more power to them, they just have to get by my privacy settings!

A Week in Review and a Vision of Students Today

This past week has given me some great input about the average student today. 

After watching the video, "A Vision of Students Today"our Web 2.0 class began working together to create our own video. Our video is focused on the 21st Century Class Room, and how we all learn with the help of technology these days. The class has done a great job of working together, to create this video. The surveys and research that were conducted gave insight on the negative aspects of technology in the class room, as most of the student body is on Facebook and other social networking sites for most of the day, but the general consensus is that we at Burlington High School really like using iPads, and we are proud to be one of the first active 21st Century Class Rooms, and our video proves this.