Blogs and Education

For my Senior Seminar class I have to spend 15 hours in a classroom. I was having trouble finding a class to work in. I wanted to pick a class that I would have no problem working in for that long of a time. Luckily, I went online and searched some school websites and stumbled upon this blog . After seeing it, I decided that this was the room I wanted to observe. I think that Mrs. Arreguin does a good job of keeping up with the technologies even though she is an older generation teacher. In her classroom she has six computer and even has a smart board.
She is trying to get something called a airliner working that allows her to work with the smart board from a little further away. I think it's great to have a smart board because so many of the kids jump at the chance to work with it.



photo by popofatticus.

Mobile Searching Moment

This past weekend my boyfriend and I were shopping for ingredients to cook some pasta. While we were there we realized that we didn't really know what two of the ingredients were. So, I took out my cell phone and texted "define arugula" and "define radicchio." Following the radicchio search, I had to look up chicory sense the definition was "a type of chicory." It actually helped us find what we needed. It also helped me win a debate between my boyfriend over the definition of "minced."

Database Form

Modbook

So, although we have not discussed anything like this in class, I must say that the Modbook looks awesome. The Modbook from Axiotron takes your everyday Mac and makes it even better. I'd say it would be best suited for those in the design field though, but it looks fun no matter what you use it for. The Modbook is different from the standard Mac in this really great way, it's a tablet. This means you can use a stylus and write on it and have what you write/draw appear on your screen. I'm sure some people are thinking, "Wow, big woop, I can do that on my phone...whatever." As a former graphic designer, this is amazing. Instead of having to "draw" using a seperate tablet and pen device, hoping that you lay the pen exactly right, you can simply draw on the monitor of the Modbook just as though you were drawing on a piece of paper. This is a step up from the tablets with interactive display and the whiteboard types as well as the HP Touch because you get the ability to use the Modbook as a regular laptop as well as a drawing tool. Pretty awesome.


top left photo by Rojer.
bottom right photo by Vincent® .
bottom left photo by zerojay .

I was bored so I sent a post from my phone just for kicks.

Random Rambling

I changed my layout because I was bored. I used an image of a sugar glider because it's random. I enjoy random things. I also enjoy reading, so I really like it when an author writes about random happenings. For example, David Sedaris talking about an old couple who look really posh but every other word is an expletive. Now enjoy this random picture.



photo by Mike McCaffrey

Crystal Ball Prediction

After researching One Laptop per Child, I believe that education and society will be greatly affected by it in the future. For example, in the classroom alone, after we had finished our presentation, many of the students in class were supportive of it and said that they would like to participate in the Give 1 Get 1 project because they find the laptop to be such an ingenious product. I think that the OLPC project is a springboard for more things to come in technology in the classroom.
I feel that in the future, the One Laptop per Child project will be in many of the developing countries and will be so prevalent, that we will have mass communications between students in different countries. I think that, along with the OLPC, schools in developed countries will turn more toward technology as well. I think that once more people see what can be done with the XOs, such as class projects involving media and program design, as well as problem solving through program writing and troubleshooting, they will implement some sort of laptop system in their own education.
Overall, I think that the XOs from the OLPC project will usher in a new era of education. where students are the creators of their learning. They will dictate what they learn because the assignments can be more open ended, rather than the current regurgitation that most schools teach. We will have a new generation of problem solvers and innovators. Classes will be more connected because they can utilize mesh networks and work on class projects and even connect with other students around the world. Who knows, maybe one day students will be doing projects in Columbia with students in Mongolia. With this sort of technology, it's possible.