Blog Assignment #2

Did You Know? 3.0 - A John Strange 2012 Version
After watching Dr. John Strange's video titled Did You Know? 3.0 - A John Strange 2012 Version, it really opened my eyes to truly how much the world advances by leaps and bounds almost by the second. We (the U.S.) must be careful and stay "on top of our game" before we get left in the dust by other countries (in terms of education and the use of technology). Also, the video shows the explosive use of technology in the world today through the use of such sites as YouTube and Google. I highly recommend to watch this video before reading the rest of this post because it also hits on other points that I do find very interesting.
One of the first points brought up in the video is that 25% of the population in India with the highest IQ outnumbers the entire population of the U.S. Man is that scary, and should really inspire everyone to really step their level up and push harder to be a better student and/or worker. The U.S. is supposedly the most dominant country in the world, but if we do not progress we will soon lose that title and be stuck here wondering what happened.
In the time that it's taken you to read this, there has been over one million YouTube videos watched and over 48 hours of video has been uploaded to YouTube. So that cool new video you watched the other day is going to be forgotten before you realize it. Yes, some videos are just dumb and not worth watching, but there are some videos out there (like the one I am discussing here) that contain great information and can really make a difference.
Google has also seemed to have taken over the world. I know many times when I don't know an answer to a question that someone has asked me and I've just responded with, "I'm not sure, let me Google that." We all have, and what is insane is that over 1.3 million people Google something every minute.

Mr. Winkle Wakes
This video titled Mr. Winkle Wakes was originally made by a professor to use as a conversation starter to discuss the use of educational technology. It begins by showing Mr. Winkle (Rip Van Winkle) waking from a hundred year slumber and discovering a new world and his first day in the "new world."
The first place Mr. Winkle goes to is work. He is amazed how people can print off pictures onto a sheet of paper and how people can communicate with each other half way across the world by just using a computer screen. It weirds Mr. Winkle out so he decides to go to the hospital since he is not feeling good. There he sees many different machines that are keeping people alive and realizes then that even the hospital has advanced so much that it makes him feel uncomfortable. Mr. Winkle decides to leave from the hospital hoping to find somewhere that is familiar. After walking for a little while he stumbles across a school. The sights he saw were very familiar: the students desk in lines, the teacher lecturing, the students taking notes. After spending the day in the classroom, he did notice one of those machines that he saw at work and the beginning of the day and also at the hospital, but he wasn't worried about it because it was in the back of the room and had dust all over it.
This video was made to start a discussion about the use of educational technology. In my opinion, I think this video is already out of date. It was made in 2008 and since then there have been multiple schools go to more technology based education. I am not currently in any class where it is not required for me to have a computer, and I'm sure it is that way for many college students. The use of technology in education doesn't stop at the college level, however, it is also starting to take hold in grades K-12. Education is constantly evolving, but the problem is that it just seems to be evolving too slow.

Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson is a very entertaining and insightful speaker. After watching Sir Ken Robinson: The Importance of Creativity I have a different view of the education system as a whole. Sir Robinson brings up the point that educators today are teaching students with the idea that the students would one day become professors. This thinking, Sir Robinson says, takes away from a student's creativity.
I definitely agree with Sir Robinson in this video. He says that all education systems are the same way with  arithmetic and language being the most important thing we study and arts are on the bottom of everyone's list. An education system made that way does limit a person's ability to be creative. The reason that the education system was created this way was because the point of education was for students to have a job once they graduate. Well, now and days there are many different types of jobs offered. This world is no longer limited to desk jobs and their is no need to teach like it is.

A Day Made of Glass 2
All I can say about this video is wow. The future of education and medicine is certainly a very bright one. Please take time out of your day and watch this: A Day Made of Glass 2 made by Corning. The days of just lecturing students and them taking notes will soon be a thing of the past. Like I said earlier, classes are moving towards using technology more in the classroom. This video not only uses technology in the classroom, but it pushes towards interactive technology in the classroom. Students do not just see a color grid and how colors mix to make other colors, but they can physically mix the colors together using an interactive table. A doctor in this future can communicate halfway across the world by just standing in a room with a glass wall.
In all these videos that I've watched today their has definitely been a theme. That theme is technology can and will be shaping education in a positive way and we as future educator's need to embrace it. Dr. Strange's video touched on the fact that technology is absolutely booming and is available for many different people. Mr. Winkle Wakes showed the fact that many classrooms, as of 2008, were an "old school" type of setting and how education needs to embrace technology. Sir Robinson's video made sure to point out the fact that the way we have viewed education in the past needs to be changed, many jobs require creativity these days and we should encourage students to pursue that creativity. Lastly, the video A Day Made Of Glass 2 was certainly mind blowing in terms of technology but also shows that there is a future for technology like that in the classroom.