Blog Post 8

In This Is How We Dream,Parts 1 and 2, Dr. Richard Miller discuses a multitude of ways in which the nature of writing and language is rapidly changing. One of his main points is that soon students will not even be using word processors of computers because projects will require a more varied approach to multimedia. He believes that projects will soon contain a combination of words, pictures, and sounds, to create "beautiful compositions". He sees this as a fundamental change to traditional methods of learning and creation.

Another major point of Dr. Miller's lecture is the notion that these new methods will propel knowledge and opinions into the world much faster than traditional methods. At one point, he mentions that a few years ago he would have had to wait two years to get an article published; now he can send the article on to the web, and in a matter of minutes, receive feedback from all over the world.

I thought Dr. Miller had some valuable ideas in this lecture. I like the idea he had about us living in the most important step for human communication in the history of the world. It is interesting to think that we can be some of the first educators in the process of that fundamental change in human communication.

Carly Pugh's assignment was an extremely creative idea concerning the use of multimedia. She put a great deal of time and effort into this assignment, and her passion for the material really came through. She certainly captures the spirit of Dr. Miller's ideas dealing with multimedia writing.

As a future English teacher, I found her ideas very enlightening and refreshing. The possibilities with the methods she describes are endless. I love the idea of being able to gather different things that interest us and combining them into a useful tool. The thing that separates her idea from many of the other assignments is the fact that it is relevant to every person that does that.

Chipper and EDM for Dummies are two entertaining student made videos that offer some useful ideas. The video of Chipper showed some of the consequences that can happen when people procrastinate and don't put the necessary effort in their work. Obviously it was done in a factious way, but that helped to bring the point across better. I also thought the analogy of flight school was a successful one. It helped to show that teaching is just like any other profession because it takes practice and training.

I thought both videos showed some interesting ways that student's can get involved. I don't consider myself much of an actor, but seeing other students get involved in this way is pretty neat.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn was an interesting video that contained the opinions of a group of forward-thinking educators. They each shared their ideas on what was important in the future of education. Many of their ideas are a summation of what we have been learning and watching so far in EDM 310. The consensus was that education must be radically changed to meet the needs of a changing global job market. Each of the educators stressed the importance of allowing technology in the classroom.

I think this group of people made some valid points. For many job sectors in the future, simple right and wrong answers do not exist and continuing to test young people in this way is counterproductive. I also agree that a greater emphasis should be placed on creative expression in class work because much of what takes place now in a work environment requires out of the box type ideas.