ETAP 687 Blogs

This has been a pretty overwhelming first two weeks.  I am signing up for websites I have never heard of and creating a course in my mind that although I know it is realistic, I wonder if I would ever have the computer know-how to execute.  I finished a computer skills self-assessment today.  I am not completely computer illiterate, yet I felt that the assessment was only asking for pretty basic skills questions-so I do not feel like I learned anything from taking that quiz.  I did learn a lot however, when looked at an online demographics statistics.  The first statistic that jumped out to me was the fact that 62% is female and only approx. 31% are male.  I am trying to figure out why this would be such a large difference, but I cannot even come up with one possibility why this could be.  I guess I was still believing in the girls don’t like science, math, or technology (well no, I do not believe that, but I thought that would at least put an opposite spin on those numbers because I know there are people out there that do!)  The other fact I learned that I would touch on is that New York has far far far more online students than any other state.  I also cannot figure this fact out.  When I saw that NY documented 43,570 I quickly looked at states that I thought would compare with NY such as California (135) Texas (122)…there is such a staggering difference I don’t understand.  If anyone has any thoughts, I would be really interested in hearing them.  I also watched a bone chilling video today entitle, “Did You Know..” which was basically about the rising technology use in the world.  I always thought of the US as the leading country in technology.  I was wrong, China completely blows us away.  The video provided a fact that China has more cell phones than we have people.  I did think it was great to see that US teens are now spending most of their time outside of school on the internet instead of watching tv.  This video did confirm my belief in the fact that we need to change the way we are teaching our students in schools, the video questioned very nicely, “What needs to change about our curriculum when our students have the ability to reach audiences far beyond our classroom walls?”  Students are learning at a rapid pace due to technology and we need to keep up with them and encourage this growth inside the classroom.  The video also said that the fastest growing age group for internet users is between the ages of 2-5 years.  This is just amazing!  I don’t know how anyone can read that statistic and not get the chills!  The last statement that I will touch upon is a quote by Albert Einstein.  He stated, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”  We need to change our ways of doing things.  We need to catch up with areas such as China. Our world is changing rapidly, we can do things that have never been done before, and if we want to solve problems…technology is the key.  Our youth is on to something, and we as educators need to support and encourage this impressive change that is happening in the world.   

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