Blog Assignment #6: Video Responses

Networked Student
I think that this was a very well put together video. It was a great visual on the concept of networked learning and it shows that students can learn much more from just a simple textbook. With networked learning, they, themselves, can learn how to interact and find information and tools that are constantly at their expense. I especially liked the comment regarding downloading podcast to an Ipod or other MP3 device. I liked this, because an Ipod is practically universal -as in almost everyone has one in this day and age. At first, I didn't realize how easy it was to find these kind of tools, but this video provides an excellent insight as to how simple it really is to find learning tools that are available for use. I also like how the video kept my attention. The way that the information was presented to the viewer was very interesting -just drawing on pieces of paper and used accordingly. I really like this video concept.

Welcome to my PLE
This student has her stuff together. I think that the way she has her PLE set up is very simple. She can easily find what she it looking for when she needs it. I like how she has everything related to school on one line, while keeping Facebook and Last.fm separate. I also like how having things set up this way gives you freedom to your assignments (i.e. her Box Jellyfish presentation.) I believe that she really understands the concept of networked learning and is able to use it to her advantage.

The Machine is (Changing) Us
     I liked this presentation very much. The presenter, Mike, discussed the degeneration of our generation. The quote, "We are, indeed, amusing ourselves to death" is a very important concept within this video. Mike goes on to explain how our society now is being run by what we see on our televisions and what we find on our internet and what we hear in our music. Our society is being influenced primarily be technology. New media that is arising is changing how we relate to others and how we come to know who we are ourselves. The technological world is expanding in mass methods and it's affecting our society in many ways.
     I very much liked the way the comparison was made between a standard classroom and the American Idol auditions. It shows that students are engaging in things that are entertaining to them. So, unless they get into a frenzy about learning the basics of Algebra or learning the rules of punctuation, students are more apt to not be active in their learning. It is our jobs as teachers to make learning appealing to our students. I also like how Mike found these quotes and applied a project to them. He quoted,

"in the midst of a fabulous array of historically unprecedented and utterly mind-boggling stimuli...whatever."

With this quote, he and his students turned it into a research project of the word "whatever." It seems to me that this kind of project would be very appealing to students, because that is a word that is very common to our culture today. I know that if I were a student, I would be more inclined to research something that was more common to my time. But with this sort of 'whatever, I can do what I want' attitude that is taking over our era comes disengagement and fragmentation. People become disengaged from other because they are busy with self-fulfillment. We, as teachers, should be able to overcome the self-fulfillment and be more engaged into the student's learning so that we can help them to overcome the "whatever generation" that we are setting up for ourselves today.
     Mike also explored the world of YouTube and how there are over 1,000,000 videos added each day. In retrospect, that is a HUGE amount of videos that are being available to the public via technology. But how many of these videos are educational and how many are for entertainment?