Karl Fisch did a great job in given us a forward thoughts to this concern. Karl’s vision really makes me want to invest in Google stock, but really the video shows all of us that technology is taking over and if you don’t know, now you know.

Technology and education will/has bumped heads and in my understanding, education is going to bend to the advancement of technology. The power of knowledge is in high demand because it changes who get’s the big fish theses days. I’ve always heard that knowledge is power but it is very literal with my everyday life style now. To know knowledge and how to get it has changed and reading it from an out-dated book is no longer acceptable.

The hard covered book is being challenged each day that technology lives and thrives. I love the smell and sound of opening a new book but with audio book being developed and widely distributed to the masses, it is changing my thoughts on my next purchase. Even the prices comparison to the audio book is more appealing to my pocket book now. I understand that the technology of audio book removes the middle man and eliminates some job but that comes with the territory.

Now I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of no paper as exciting, necessarily, but I continue to find myself more and more eschewing paper of just about any kind in my life. My newspaper/magazine intake is down to nearly zero, every note I take is stored somewhere in the cloud via my computer or iPhone, I rarely write checks, pay paper bills or even carry cash money any longer, and I swear I could live without a printer except for the times when someone demands a signed copy of something or other. (Admittedly, I still read lots of paper books, but I’m working on that.) (http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/get-off-paper/ )

As I said earlier, the year 2020 will be an interesting year for technology in education. I believe that most middle school student will all have a personal email, blog, face book and Google group account before they make it to high school. The demand to stay in touch will create an atmosphere that will push our student to be highly advance and technical. At this point, I’d rather think about other uses of technology as a vision for future education than the extreme on-line education.  While we do not have an easy access to modern technology equipment in school, students in the future will learn with cutting-edge equipment to solve problems. The new student may perform experiments with an electron microscope, which I have not used before, instead of an old-fashioned optical microscope. Just the other day, I watched my 10yr old niece create a science project online and then she printed it out. I also had the pleasure of watching her email her friends about her upcoming birthday plans. Technology waits for no one and is being integrated into every aspect of our lives whether we like it or not. We don’t need to know how to use the latest and  greatest new technology but we certainly need to know what is out there and adjust our current and future state expectations accordingly.

Earlier today I was thinking that my Parents weren’t even able to log on their computer at their house. There is a major gap in communication and my age group is right in the middle of both the old and highly advance young people. We as teachers/educators will be the mediators of this gap and I feel this gap will grow even farther for those senior people that choose not to get on board. As I said earlier, the future will not have mercy for the senior generation, it’s sad to say that but the truth hurt sometimes. Our nation made a perfect example just on last year. Our nation decided that our television network was going digital, this decision was just pushed down us and now we all have to pay for cable. Now, this is very personal to me because I’ve never paid for cable prior to that year and now I have to pay to get what was free just last year. Our nation strong armed our society and I believe that was just a test. The next strong arm is coming and it’s just around the corner and I believe that it will be with the internet service providers.

In Memphis, TN last month our Mayor made a proposal to increase technology in our city: Mayor ‘s Request! Promising to toss the Bluff City’s hat into the online ring, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton on Tuesday announced plans to seek a super-fast Google Fiber network for his town. The need for technology is progressing everywhere that you look and it can be intimidating to most people but everyone want the latest greatest thing.

Higher education in 2020 will be much more accessible to general public with the help of the revolutionized and popularized educational technologies. The SAT and other standard higher education admission tests will be dysfunctional. The physical locations and facilities will be less important in defining a college or a university. The educational resources of a higher education institution will be easily accessed by outside general public who seek higher level learning through on-line technologies.

Two very remarkable features of then higher education will shake the fundamental beliefs of economics of higher education and politics of higher education respectively. I think that the interaction between professors and students will be more frequent and effective in terms of internal relationship, because the traditional classroom teaching and office hours become unnecessary. In terms of external relationship, the interaction between a university and non-university communities will become easier and in wider range. And the university will respond quickly to the changes and influences in outside world. And both the internal efficiency and external efficiency will be greatly increased.

The thought and process of the current curriculum and instruction will be changed severely. Because the new technologies make the learning and teaching more easily, the contents of some courses will be expanded, a considerable number of new courses will be generated, courses and studies will be more possible, and students and professors will contribute together to the development of curriculum of each class.

In conclusion, education in 2020 will be highly advance and much more efficient. There will be jobs lost in the education careers but our society will make up in the psychology careers.

As a Google Group user, you can also create your profile with cool colors and images. The tool even gives you an option to create websites within the group and share files. In the classroom we had a group that started a discussion about how to build a computer tower. Each member of the group had access and was then able to post comments, share photos and edit the site with their ideas. The Google Group page is a must have when you decide to have online collaboration.

The thought of having a paperless classroom has been a topic in my department meetings. My current technology class is pretty much paperless. The students have blog sites and wiki pages that keep them very busy during their assignments. They are assigned class work and are notified through the RSS and anyone including the Parents can RSS to the class assignment so that they can stay in the loop of their child’s development. It is a step up from the traditional classroom and the students are allowed to use paper when turning in assignments. We are giving the student an experience of what the future will hold and these 10^th graders will have a leg up on their future classmates.

The paperless classroom has changed the role of the teacher and the teacher is now constantly being updated with comments and emails from the student. It can be overwhelming but the interaction is so engaging. The teacher can now use tool to highlight the errors of the student and reassigned the assignment back to the student all online. It stamps the information and it keeps a great log on each student and the teacher’s notes.

Paperless class will change learning experiences because the student will now have to learn all the tools and will now have immediate access to the latest information. The out dated book is a thing of the past. I think being paperless will encourage the student to use various resources during the course of the class to complete the assignments. And the assignment can be graded on the same level when it was paperless. The teacher will still have access to the student’s submission of assignments but you won’t have to return the grade as paper.

I think that the paperless space has made it easier for me to create a learning network with my student. The students are now able to collaborate on assignments online and that gives them a chance to read and gather information about the topic via the other group members’ notes and post. Also, some of the student’s blog have to be commented on and I think by the student being assigned to comment on the blog of the other student it creates a network of learning the other students thoughts and then it create a dialogue.

Teachers and students are now using collaborative space and gathering links and annotated reading list that current and future classes can read and build on in the future. The open-source-type classroom in which everyone contributes to the curriculum has been birth and there’s no going back. My views have changed since I’ve taken this course of Online Collaboration. It has encouraged me to expand the technology in my classroom to further my student’s education experience.

            My understanding is that both agree with; ‘Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments.’ Now, with that said they are just auguring the symmetric (relating to or having balanced proportions, especially in two halves of a whole) of this term and it can be very confusing to read. It took me a few hours just to read and understand the arguments placed by both writers.

            On this week my professor for my online class asked me to place and argument on another group’s article site (http://bce-spring2010.wikispaces.com/Bev%2C+Gretchen%2C+Sara) for a class assignment. This is very uncomfortable but here we go. The statement that I chose was; “Connectivism in theory, describes the process in which the learner engages in to attain new knowledge. I do understand that people can use different tools to obtain knowledge but I stand on the statement of Verhagen (2006). You must still apply the 3 three pillars of learning theory behaviorism, constructivism, and cognivitism. So with that being said, I believe that Siemens (2004) article is simply a pedagogical view.

Skype is a powerful and highly advance tool to keep any organization in touch. It is only $2.95 a month for unlimited calls so I downloaded it onto my laptop and iphone. AT&T is charging me too much so I will use this tool to save me some money. Also, a few of the students download the app on their iphones to save money.

My hopes are to gain a comfort zone with the school system in using Skype. I understand that any technology can be used improperly but I do hope that schools will embrace this new technology. This will bring our children to the highest level of communication in my opinion. The technology is not expensive, it will reduce travel expenses and any classroom can use it to communicate with another group any where in the world.

            The City of Memphis, Tennessee, has a charter says, that they are responsible for funding the schools at 87 cents for every $100 of valuation. In June 2008, it cut the funding to 19 cents, allowing it to give tax cuts to citizens and raises to city employees. Now, in 2008 it made the taxpayer happy for a minute and it made a few city employees happy for their raises. But, as you will see it caused a long term issue for the taxpayer and the Memphis City School System.  

            The City of Memphis has an appointed City Council committee in charge of these funds and they are not connected to the school system. These people make the decision on funding the school system in our district. Now, this put the taxpayer and the school system in a bind. This month the Memphis City School System has filed a suit against the City of Memphis to get the funds promised to them by their charter agreement. This means that the school system is not going to get their funding to match their budget of operation for this school year. This also means that the taxpayer will have to pay for the City Attorney and the School Attorney to fight it out in the courtroom.  

This leads me to our discussion: How do you feel about the City of Memphis managing the Memphis City School System. Also, is it a good idea to give the School System over to the district to run?  

Here are a few blogs to reference your thoughts:  

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/feb/19/memphs-city-schools-sues-city-50-million/

 http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/feb/17/ruling-funding-fight-favors-schools/

 http://www.memphisdailynews.com/editorial/Article.aspx?id=37269

 ” Podcast in the Classroom”

 http://wburley06.mypodcast.com/index.html

(February 18, 2010)  PC Peripherals from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wburley06/4367507940/

This assignment has given me a chance to play with a tool that I thought I knew something about. Last year I created an account with Flickr to store some pictures of events that I was apart of, and I must say that I’m surprised. The tool is great for sharing pictures and videos with any group or to the public. I think it would be a great idea to have my students to post their pictures on the site as a group. The privacy that the tool provides to a group to make their items public or private will make any teacher or parent comfortable with the tool. My students love to provide me with pictures of their assignments and how they were created in stages. With this tool the students will be able to post a slideshow of their projects for everyone to view.

System Board

(Feburary 18, 2010)  – System Board – http://www.flickr.com/photos/wburley06/4367507940/ 

As that technology coordinator of the school, I love to challenge my students with pictures. The annotation tool really makes Flickr amazing and I plan to use it on a test soon. My goal is to show a system board and the student will have to identify all the slots and parts of the system board. Before the test all the student will view and study the annotation of the system board and then I will remove the answers and let the students fill it in.

The developers are working on keeping the application presentable and organized. The developers are well aware of some of the cons of the applications. The developers say that the cons are what make the application exciting just like the humans opinion. We all have opinions and thoughts and it good for our thoughts and opinions to be posted to the public. Wiki has pro and cons just like any other application that is available to the public but I think it will get better in time.

I believe that if teacher advise the students in what wiki is and where the information comes from, I think that students will use wiki for the value that it is when doing research. The wiki tool should be used in the classroom to promote collaboration of projects offsite. It will challenge their tech skills and communication.