Week 3: Part 1 Blogger Report!

Blog #1
The first blogger I chose to look at was Jeff Utecht. The blog I read was about solar roadways. It contained this video.

Now I've seen this video on Facebook and just never chose to look at it. Boy was I missing out. This stuff is cool! It's a lot like the video we watched the first day in class where everything in your world is eventually hooked up to technology. For example, the ferry you take to work transmits information to your car telling you the ferry you normally take it late so no need to rush, etc. This video was all based on solar roadways and what they will do for the environment and for the way we live. I really hope these come to fruition soon (mostly because they talked about not having to shovel/drive in the snow because the solar panels would be heated).

I really enjoyed how Jeff related this video to the classroom. He compared the roadways to a classroom by saying how it is not the technology or the funding really that we need to be worried about as much as it is the stubbornness of humans. We are naturally inclined to want to keep things the same but with the change in technology we should be evolving with it and changing how we live and how we teach.

This blog helped me better understand technology and education because it further emphasized how we need to be utilizing technology and changing with technology instead of just allowing technology to become a part of a lesson. We should really be using the technology to further enhance curriculum and our teacher. Overall I really enjoyed this blog post and I would highly recommend it.


Blog #2
The second blog I read was Vicki Davis's blog Cool Cat Teacher. It instantly grabbed my attention because it was titled "10 Ways to be a Terrible Teacher". I really enjoyed this post because it was her personal opinions on what can create a "terrible teacher". Some of her points I thought were obvious (don't spend all day on your phone) but I guess with technology booming and people being stuck to their smartphones everyday this may be something that needs to be remembered.

Overall I enjoyed this blog. It didn't exactly connect technology and education or help me better understand the two. I felt this was more of a personal blog and she was kind of using it as a vent/outlet which is of course fine. I enjoyed reading it and we share a lot of similar opinions on teaching.

Blog #3
The final blog I chose to read was written by Angela Maiers. I felt this blog post was extremely appropriate because it was titled "How Companies and People Must Adapt In the Social Age". The title grabbed my eye right away and I knew I had to keep reading. It wasn't a long blog post but one quote that really stuck with me was "The Social Age is not the Technology Age. New technologies, though powerful, are merely the tools that allow us to connect and be productive. Instead, our changing interactions are the defining piece of this new shift." I thought this quote was especially interesting because it was along the same lines of other things I had read recently. The technology doesn't seem to be most people's (or technology minded peopled for instance) concern. The problem is how we use the technology or how we are too afraid to change with it. This blog just reiterated this information for me and really drove it home.