Technology separate from Work and Education

In Waldorf School in Silicon Valley, children from "employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard." go to school there. This surprises me but to a point at which i can understand where they are coming from. The employees that work at those companies came from a generation where technology had no connection with education. With the tools they had at their schools they were creative enough to create companies like google, apple, and yahoo. They believe that using technology in education  could create tunnel vision. They only stated that they rejected technology in education in grammar school, which only consists of elementary schools. Elementary school is a period where a child's mind is developing rapidly, so they appose the idea of technology in  a children's brain development period. Thus telling us that they think technology can affect a child's brain development negatively.

How the Internet Gets to Know You.

Today, many sites have to ability to filter out the things you see on their websites by your past searches. In other words the internet turns biased to what you like and your opinions. Ted's message is that the internet is moving the wrong way with this idea. Once you conduct a search your opinions should be challenged and there should be more things about the other side of your opinion. Without this, it will cause you to become close minded and you will only see your side of things all the time. You have to see other people's views and their ideas to know how they think and where they are coming from.

An Apple a Day Keeps the Paper Away.

Schools like Roslyn High School on Long Island have embraced the idea of using ipads as learning tools. They handed out 47 ipads on Dec. 20 to the students and teachers in two humanties classes. The School district hopes to provide ipads eventually to all 1,100 of its students. One teacher at the school enjoyed having the ipads and said that they expanded the four walls of the classroom. Another teacher and some other schools said that they do not think that giving children laptops and ipads will have a good effect on their educations. Things like games and the internet can distract them from the tasks at hand. These problems and predictions are definitely similar to our problems. Some parents have questioned the digital citizenship of the students at BHS and also the responsibility of having a $600.00 item in their hands. I think ipads are a great idea for classroom use, but i still think some things need to be fixed about it. It definitely provides more information to students but also gives them more freedom on the web. 

What I Have Learned So Far.

Last week i learned about google reader, flip board, and blogger. I have integrated these apps into my everyday high school life and classes by, for example, using google reader to see news about politics and things going around about the wars. I also used flip board to see what goes on about informative websites like CNN. I also learned about google searches and the algorithms they use to conduct searches. This will help me to make searches on google easier for my use. These apps will help me in my college courses by giving my information about everyday life and maybe new things that are going on in my specific field of research.