Surviving In The Educational Village

Blog #2


To survive, is to to remain alive or in existence, to continue to function or prosper.

Yoder, (2011), stated that, “ to succeed and prosper in today’s increasingly digital world, digital literacy skills are essential”. 

I agree with Yoder, in that to help our students survive in this “New World”, we as  educators must foster competency in digital literacy, which is one of most crucial tools that we can provide our students with, as society strives to produce technology literate and competent digital citizens. 

In helping our students survive, our system of education; 

• should prepare students to address the world’s problem and belief that scientific discovery and technological innovations will play a critical role in their lives.
• engage students in critical thinking and problem solving activities while fostering global awareness and ability to collaborate with others.
• digital media literacy should be part of the curriculum, such as, keyboarding, research skills,  alongside, cyberbullying and civility too.

 In teaching and helping them to survive, there should be some guidelines put in place to help them succeed. However, the digital rules are not really different from the ones in real world. For example;

• “Don’t talk to strangers”- limit your friends online to people you know in real life.
• Remember the Golden Rule”- don’t post things you wouldn’t want posted about you. 
• Use your time wisely- set rules about media use
• “Lock your doors”- use and recheck your privacy settings often.

By the way, do we have to set rules like the ones above to help our digital generation survive or we should just over suggestions?

**Click on the link below to watch a video, just added it to show how our students think today**

file://localhost/Users/owner/Desktop/youtu.be:SkhpmEZWuRQ.webloc

References

Yoder, A. (2011), Promoting Digital Literacy In The Classroom Through Web 2.0.  Technologies. College of  Central Florida,    U.S.

 http://pwsdeducationaltechnology.blogspot.com

http://sloanconsortium.org/conferences/2011/aln/promoting-digital-literacy-classroom-through

Technology: A Teaching Tool

Blog #1

The world is shrinking as technology now allow us to communicate with peers around the world. Thus making the world a village, where we speak the same language,  practice same culture and share same goals, “TECHNOLOGY”. Just a click of a button and you can access the world around you. Technology rules everything now, the world, education, economy, communication, families, and the worst of all our youth/students. 

For us to make the best use out of it, education/schools should take a major role in incorporating the use of more technology in our schools so as we can speak the same language as our students. Speaking the same language goes a long way, it helps achieve goals, vision and reach a decision. As much as we want to change our educational system to meet our economic, social and political needs, education should be presented through the medium/media used by our students today.

This calls for creativity and the need for encouragement and support for sustainable innovations of teachers. Shimabukuro (2011), outline the following to suggest how teachers/education can meet this needs, (1) more freedom to determine how and when to use some of the latest online technology that they’re independently exploring, discovering and using (2) more resources to implement those technologies in their own online learning and teaching environment (3) more non-instructional time to develop, prepare, and manage these new environments.

Meeting these needs does not only lie on the teacher/school, as stressed by Withrow (2011) in his article, “ Education of our children is a responsibility for all members of the society, lets us have a system worthy of the digital age”. The success of our future leaders much depends on how best we use the technology in our digital age to educate and capture their interest and involvement in our world today.

With that been said, should we allow our High School students to use their cell phones in the classroom as a resource tool?

  

 References

Shimabukuro, J. (2011). A Lesson From Kyrene: Technology Alone is Not the Answer

Withrow, F. (2011). It Still Takes a Village: Social Media Challenges for Schools in the Digital Age

http://etcjournal.com/2011/08/21/9726/

www.techbridgeworld.org