The Future of Education; Reaction to 2020 Forecast

      2020 Forecast for the Future of Education is an interesting initiative to incorporate education into a whole community endeavor where learning takes place at any time and any place.  It makes learning student centered and technology driven so that students can reach outside the classroom and standard ways of teaching to learn out in the community and solve real-world problems.  As a teacher in 2020, I think that I will work as a coworker of organizations and companies in the community, which will allow my students access to real-world problems and solving them.  We will use the community and their neighborhoods as our classrooms and make solving real-world problems games and incorporating strategies to do so.  It will involve less of a transfer of information from teacher to student and more involve students seeking knowledge through a variety of avenues.  Aside from getting out into the community, learning will be expanded worldwide by using resources of the World Wide Web and the technologies that correspond with it. 

  

      I think that some of the steps I need to take to engage learners more would be to incorporate more technologies and media sources into my classroom to expand learning outside the classroom. I also think I need to seek out people in the community to work alongside in order to create learning experiences for students. At first that might involve getting professionals and career people into the classroom to provide a connection between the classroom and the real world. Later that might involve learning on site with such professionals to solve real-world problems and address current issues to make the community a better place to live.  

Lab Safety Rap

      The following video is a Lab Safety Rap put together by a group of chemistry students at Arroyo Grande High School.

I would use this video to teach students rules of lab safety and promote lab safety as fun.  I think that students could also use this lab safety video as a starting place for putting together their own lab safety video.  This would not only incorporate the lab safety rules but would enable them to use technology in creating a video and their talents for writing music, scripts, etc.  Students could create a lab safety wrap or music video similar to the one shown or create more of a story regarding the lab safety rules.  They could also succinctly demonstrate the lab safety rules in their video.  Their videos could all be posted to the class blog.

Reaction to YouTube Video: A Vision of K-12 Students Today

     After viewing this video, I think that as educators we need to step into the 21^st century and adapt our instruction to the rapidly changing technologies that are available to our students and us.  We are standing behind the “old ways” of doing things and need to innovate our instruction to incorporate the use of technology to teach our students.  They live in an information age where vast amounts of information are at their fingertips, and we need to teach them how to access such information and guide their own self-directed learning.  Students need to be taught how to think for themselves and synthesize their own ideas about what they are learning. However, how this is done I simply do not know. 

Review of Content Area Teachers' Blogging

I found, in my review of the blogs of several content area teachers, that there are many opportunities for student learning in blogging.

One of my favorite blogs was an English teacher (http://bgexemplar.blogspot.com) who not only used his blog as a resource for daily happenings in the classroom but as a resource for students to set up their own class blogs.  He provided prompts with detailed instructions on how to add different components to their blogs such as uploading a video, picture, etc.  His blogged information was not only informative to students but was informative to teachers looking to blog as well. In addition to setting up their blog sites, he also had prompts for the students to respond. Each of these had specific grading guidelines as well.  I liked that this teacher used his blog for classroom extension activities but also for teaching the students how to use the technology itself.  He also did a good job of outlining guidelines for their posts and how he was to grade them.

Another feature of blogging I found interesting was that a middle school teacher (http://mrjorgensen.edublogs.org) used his blog to prompt his students in writing on their own blogs and making their blog into a portfolio of their work.  Through the blog he taught them how to upload documents and showcase their work.

One teacher was using her blog as a place for students to post anything related to biology. They would present their findings from an article they had read or other site to the class through the blog.  It was a good way to get students reading about science in places other than the textbook or specific class topics.

As a result of my examination of several teachers' class blogs, I would like to use blogs with my students in such a way that provides a way to bridge the gap between social media and education.  I envision a blog similar to the English teacher's blog I praised that over the course of a year taught students how to create and utilize their blog. It would also be used to provide out-of-class discussion and reflection based on in-class topics.  I also would like to get students to get out there and see what is happening in science today. They could post their findings on their blogs as well so that the class blog would create a forum for science news as well.  I feel that this type of blog would help to enhance in-class learning and expand scientific literacy with my students.

In fulfilling this vision, I would need to outline guidelines for posting and evaluation of the posts.  I would be able to tell in the classroom if learning has been enhanced with the use of the blog because it would be based on a more in-depth analysis/reflection of the topics addressed in class.  I feel this would be evident in the students' understanding of the content.