Bill Gates on Mosquitos, Malaria and Education...

When I first saw the name of this video, I thought, "What the heck does education have to do with mosquitoes and malaria". Turns out, it has a lot to do with it. Around the 7:15 minute mark, it talks about who is needed to help fight malaria (communicators, social scientists, mathematicians, drug companies, government). This is what leads Gates into teaching and education.

Bill Gates talks about how the economy is only providing for those with higher and better education but we need to change it so that "people have equal opportunity" and make the country strong. Some of the statistics he talks about are appalling, especially when he talks about the minority students. It is so sad and it makes my heart break that everyone in this country does not have the chance for better education.

However, he talks about "great teachers" are the ones who can make the difference. Now, I completely agree that great teachers are needed and if you have a great teacher, the students will be driven, enjoy school and do well. BUT, I also think that parents have a lot to do with it. We do need great teachers to get the kids excited and challenged, but if the students are not being challenged, or engaged when they get home, then the knowledge may not stick. Gates mentioned that everyone needs to be involved. Even though he is specifically talking about the KIPP schools, parents need to be involved as well. It is interesting to see how the teachers are treated at the KIPP school. The teachers may not be the most educated (I'm talking about Master's and Doctorate degrees) or the most experienced, but they are the ones who get help from mentors and their lessons are video taped and critiqued. It seems like a great system.

I enjoyed listening to his presentation. I thought he was a great speaker and he had a great message, but I think it goes beyond great teachers - the students have to be engaged when they go home as well. Parents should be held responsible for their children's education as well. I don't mean they have to fork over tons of money to send their kids to school, but they should ask their kids if they have homework, what did they learn in school, and have them show what they are being taught.

If Children Have Interest, Education Happens...

I am very impressed with the experiments that Sugata Mitra composed with self-directed learning. I think his research shows that self-directed learning is very important in today's time. The children need to learn how to find the answers and knowledge that they need instead of having someone teach them things that may never play a role in their lives. But, I don't think what Mitra showed was completely self-directed learning. He guided the children a little bit. I also think that if you put a computer in front of American kids who already had more access to the Internet and computers, they may be more likely to play games and not really do educational things with it.

I read some of the comments under the video and they were very intriguing as well. One person mentioned confidence and critical thinking are the only skills necessary to have any kind of achievement. I think they are two very important skills, but I also believe children need a little more than that. If children only learned what they wanted to learn, they would lose so much important information that may not be useful to them everyday, but are still important things to learn. If I only learned what I wanted, I would not know any kind of math. I hate math but I understand that I need to know some of it - like how to find percentages so I know how much 30% off is of a sweater that I am dying to own.

Anyway, I think Mitra has some good points about how eager the kids were to learn when they were left alone and received little more than encouragement from "grandmothers", but I think there is a little more than just leaving kids with computers and having them teach themselves. There can still be self-directed learning but with encouragement and guidance from teachers.

Teach Me Something New....

Amanda W. and I worked on a presentation for Evernote, an online application that helps the user to remember things and stay organized. You input what you need to remember into notebooks (websites, pictures, business cards, notes, etc.) and Evernote makes the entries searchable.

Technology is constantly challenging teachers and students. Today's students learn in a different way than yesterday's students. Students are no longer looking at chalkboards and taking notes with pencil and paper. With Evernote, teachers can upload their notes and the entire class has access to them. Evernote can also help the students stay organized when working on projects and assignments - be it alone or in a group. It is also a great resource to maintain a portfolio for class, work, or personal reasons (decorating, wedding planning).

I have become used to working on group projects without ever meeting my group members. Amanda and I communicated through email and it was super easy to get everything done. The only problem I had was uploading the PPT. When the voice-over was added, it made the file too big to send or upload. Amanda really helped me out with getting Dropbox set up.



Other topics that were assigned to fellow classmates include: Prezi, Glogster, Storybird, Typewith.me and Wordle. Out of all of the assignments, Prezi is the only one I have heard of before. I absolutely LOVE Prezi! It is such a creative way to make presentation. PowerPoint is getting a little stale, if you ask me, and Prezi is the perfect tool to kick a presentation up a notch. It helps you see the big picture and then you can zoom in when you want to make specific points. The one down side to Prezi, is that the presentation can be the main focus, instead of the speaker.



Glogster is a very interesting concept. It is basically a digital poster board and collage tool. You just drag your content to the page and make it look good. The content can be image, text, video, graphics, or sound. Once you have finished the glog, it can be embedded to a blog or classroom website.



Storybirds are short stories inspired by art that can be saved and printed out. Teachers can use Storybirds to encourage students to write and then publish their stories. Teachers can create classroom libraries, which can also be used as fundraisers for the school. It is super easy to create. Just find the art you like, and write in the text box. Students can work together or alone on a Storybird and teachers/parents can keep an eye on what is being done.



Typewith.me is a collaboration tool that allows up to 15 participants to work on a document, simultaneously, on the Internet. Once you start a document, you just send the URL to no more than 15 people and get to work. Each person just chooses a color so they can be identified. There is a chat feature that allows you to talk with other collaborators. The document can be saved at anytime, which allows the user to go back and look at the document before changes have be made. It's just an easy, no nonsense tool that is completely free. It can make group work so much easier to have everyone on the same page actually seeing the changes that are being made. That way, someone doesn't have to email the document back and forth when changes have been made.

Finally, Wordle is a tool that generates "word clouds". The words that are repeated frequently will be bigger and more noticeable. It can customized with a desired font, color, size, etc. Word clouds can be used for project enhancements. Wordle is a visually pleasing application.

This assignment has opened my eyes to FREE resources that are really useful to teachers, students, or even professionals who work in a group environment.