Blog Post 2

Did You Know?
     This video clearly exemplifies how fast not only our nation, but the world is growing. It’s strange to think about how much is seems like our nation is expanding, when compared to other countries, the growth isn’t comparable. For example, in this 4:56 minute video, 67 babies were born in the U.S. which seems like a lot. Then I saw the statistics from other countries I was amazed. In less than 5 minutes, 274 babies were born in China and 395 babies were born in India. India’s birthrate is approaching a baby being born practically every second. Another comparison between population is the 25% of the highest I.Q.’s in India is greater than the entire U.S. population. That means India has more “smart people” than we have people in the U.S.
     This brings me to my next astonishment witnessed in this video, the unbelievably fast growth of technology. The amount of new technological information in the U.S. doubles every 2 years. This means by the time a student is a junior in college, half of what they learned their freshman year is out of date. In some places students are being trained for jobs that don’t even exist yet. This is an obvious problem not only because college isn’t cheap and every student want to get the education that they paid for, but it hiders the job market as well. Older workers must be frequently retrained and sometimes even replaced by newly trained workers. Because if this, the U.S. Department of Labor predicts that today’s student will have between 10 and 14 jobs before they reach the age of 40. Another fact that surprised me is that 1 in 4 workers have only been with there employer for less than a year and 1 in 2 have been employed for less than 5 years.
     One of the biggest most universal technological advances was the production of computers and the Internet. It took only 4 years for the Internet to reach an audience of 50 million people. Social networking cites such as facebook and myspace have literally become the link to the world. In its first 2 years created, facebook reached 50 million people. There are over 200 million people that have myspace accounts which could represent the 5th largest country in the world. If that’s not shocking enough, I bet the fact that 1 in 8 married couples last year met online. This goes to show how advanced and important technology is to our rapidly growing world. The correlation between the two (population and technology) are obvious in that more people demand a wider variety of updated technology.



Mr. Winkle Wakes
     This video also exemplifies the growth of technology in our society. Mr. Winkle awakes after 100 years to find a much different way of life. I think some of the things he witnessed are sometimes taken for granted for by our world today. An example is when he visited the hospital. Mr. Winkle was astonished seeing people literally being kept alive by machines. In the past I’m sure it was never considered that such a thing would ever exist. There are so many technological advances that I personally have unfortunately, nevertheless fortunately, used in hospitals. For example, CT scans x ray machines, MRI’s, and IV’s. It’s hard to imagine how people got by in the past without all of this and it makes me wonder what my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will have someday. I’m sure they will wonder how we got by in 2010!
    Mr. Winkle was extremely curious about the new advancement of computers; he witnessed them in the hospital, school, and office and realized that they are a very important aspect in the daily functioning of our society as a whole. Business people were shown having conferences with others across the world on computers. There were both video and voice features which comes in handy now not only for businesses, but for communicating with family and friends in other parts of the country and even other parts of the world.



The Importance of Creativity
     This video was unlike the previous ones I have been discussing because it had one more specific subject. In his presentation, Sir Ken Robinson explains why he believes that schools kill creativity. I agree with his point that no one knows what the world is going to be like 5 years from now. We don’t know what jobs are going to be needed, yet beginning as children, we are trained to suit the current needs. What many educators fail to believe is that creativity is just as important as literacy. Creativity isn’t taught, it’s a natural ability that everyone is born with, yet the way that creativity shines or is brought out in a person can sometimes be blamed or associated to their surroundings. When children aren’t supported in their creativeness, it doesn’t shine. According to Sir Ken Robinson, you don’t grow into creativity but it’s grown out of more often.
     A funny story he expressed in his speech showed how creative children really are. They have incredible capabilities and it’s amazing what they can come up with sometimes. The example he gave was a young child drawing a picture of god. His teacher tells him that no one knows what god really looks like, but he tells her “they will in a minute”. This is clear evidence that kids will take a chance on anything, they don’t mind being wrong when they are young and what they say doesn’t embarrass them very easily. Adults on the other hand are afraid to make mistakes. We never want to be wrong. That’s why creativity isn’t as common the older we get, people are growing out of their creativity.



Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts
     This video reminded me a lot of this class (EDM 310). The teacher was obviously a great instructor who cared a lot about her students and their success in the classroom. She included a variety of activities to suit the needs of all of her students. I am a firm believer that there is no one right way to teach/learn. I think that it is important to always provide a variety of surrounding for students to help with their learning experience.
     In this video the class used blogs and Google routinely as assignments and learning activities. You can clearly see that the class is not only helping each other as teacher to peer and peer to peer, but peer to teacher as well. Ms. Davis (the instructor) straightforwardly admitted that her students teach her so much. She, like myself, is willing to always learn something new. I look forward to becoming a teacher because I realize that my classes will teach me so very much. She is also very committed to assisting children who may have trouble with a pen and paper become successful with a computer.