C4T #2

Scott McLeod is the teacher I was assigned to this week. He is the author of the blog Dangerously Irrelevant. Scott is an Associate Professor in the Educational Administration Program at Iowa State University. He is also the director of (CASTLE). I chose two of Mr. McLeod's post to comment on.

1. Some big questions for educators (and parents and policymakers)- Scott made this post when he could not make it to Educon this year due to snow. So, he shared "some questions for attendees to ponder as they interact with each other" during their weekend. The post consisted of 18 questions. Here is the general gist of each. 

1. When are we going to start integrating technology into our schooling lives like we do in our personal lives and in our non-school professional lives?
2. Is your school organization serious about educational technology?
3. What percentage of your school technology budget goes toward teacher-centric technologies - rather than student-centric - technologies?
4.  What can you do to tap into the educational power of your students as online collaborators creators sharers and contributors?
5. How can you tap into the power of open access and open educational resources for your staff and students?
6. How are you (or should you be) tapping into the power of technology to facilitate differentiated individualized personalized learning experiences for your students?
7. Are you facilitating linear or exponential change in your school organization?
8. In all of our efforts to teach students safe appropriate and responsible technology use are we forgetting the more important job of teaching our students empowered use?
9. When we teach our students how to write are we teaching our students how to do so in hyperlinked networked interconnected online spaces for authentic relevant worldwide audiences?
10. When e-books or e-textbooks now can contain hyperlinks embedded video live chat with other readers collaborative annotation where you see others’ notes and highlights and/or interactive maps games and simulations does it still make sense to call them ‘books?’
11. When all of the books in your media center become electronic will you still need a physical space called a ‘library?’ Will you still need ‘librarians?’
12. Do we really understand what our kids are doing with social media or is what we know primarily from the news media?
13. Are we intentionally purposefully and explicitly modeling these new technology literacies for our students?
14. What percentage of my job could be done by robust learning software that not only delivers content in a variety of modalities to students but also assesses them on their mastery of that content? 
15. Am I doing what really needs to be done to prepare students for a hypercompetitive global information economy and for the demands of digital global citizenship? In other words am I preparing students for the next half century rather than the last half century?
16. If as a teacher I’m not incorporating digital technologies into students’ learning processes in ways that are relevant meaningful and powerful on a regular and frequent basis – should I get to keep my job? 
17. If as an administrator I’m not creating facilitating and maintaining robust technology-infused globally-interconnected learning environments for staff and students should I get to keep my job? 
18. f as a policymaker I’m not allocating fiscal and policy resources in directions that move schools and society forward in the appropriate directions am I willing to be held accountable for sacrificing our children’s futures for the fears and political pettiness of the present?

I commented on this post by first introducing myself and stating I am a student in Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class. I chose this post to comment on because I think these are questions everyone in and going into the education field should think about. In my comment, I addressed questions #10 and #11. I personally have several e-books and e-textbooks. Being a college students, I have found e-books are the way to go. I would normally spend about half of what I paid for tuition buying textbooks. With e-books, I spent less than $100 this semester. That’s unbeatable! The books can be updated quickly. I do not have to go through a pack of highlighters a week in order to highlight my text. Also, e-books are a lot better for our environment, and our school systems could save tons of money. 

If you would like to respond to any of these questions, read the post more in depth, or see others' responses to the questions...please visit Scott Mcleod's blog to do so. 

2. Big Move #2: Does a faculty member need to live near his university? is the 2nd post I chose to comment on. Just so you are not lost, there was a previous Big Move #1. Mr. Mcleod was asked to become a writer for Big Think, and his blog Dangerously Irrelevant is now hosted there. (Might I add, Big Think is an awesome site!) So...back to Big Move #2. Scott asks the question, "Does a faculty member need to live near his university?" As I mentioned above, Mr. Mcleod lives is Iowa, but he has accepted a job at the University of Kentucky (UK). He did not feel it was the right time to pick his family up and move to Kentucky, so he pitched a 'global worker' proposal to UK and they said yes. 

First, I congratulated Scott on his big news. I also stated how this shows us just how useful technology can be...we students can have wonderful teachers that are not physically there. UK is lucky to have someone so passionate. I told Mr. Mcleod I look forward to keeping up with his blog and seeing how this new chapter of his life turns out. I also had to throw a friendly "Roll Tide" in there as well.