Video Assignment

After watching all the thought provoking videos I was extremely inspired by the fact that so many people are doing the right thing....of promoting a good culture among the students and inspiring them to learn in a innovative way so they move from being knowledgeable to knowledge-able. Each of the videos had a powerful message but the ones that really stirred me were the following-

• A VISION OF STUDENTS TODAY - Mike Wesch has done a tremendous favor to us educators by promoting his students to compile all this interesting data for us to read again and again, till we realize how crucial it is for us to bring some change in our ways of teaching.I would be scared for our students future and feel compelled as an educator to bring about the change. As an administrator watching this video would result in a lot of discussion among my staff as to where we are going wrong and how can we change some of these percentages.The data shared in this video would be shared with parents too on a Parent Ed night to educate them as to what our students are experiencing today. Together we would have to share the burden of promoting a better culture. The teachers would have to start educating themselves with the new tools available for them to entice the students to learn.
• A VISION OF K-12 STUDENTS- This video would truly inspire teachers to use technology for higher level thinking. This would be a great follow up video for an administrator to share and  further stress the importance of teaching the students to think,create, analyze,evaluate and apply, thus teaching them to think. As an administrator I would promote offering professional development courses to the staff to introduce them to the innovative uses of technology. Teachers would be expected to allow students to create, consume, remix and share information with each other.
• 21st CENTURY LEARNING- This video was en eye opener for me as it made me wonder if I was a digital immigrant or a digital native. I do know for a fact that by the end of this Masters program I will definitely be a Digital native (thanks to my professors). As an administrator this would be the next question posed to the staff  " Are you a digital immigrant or a digital native". Their answers would decide their future path. They will all be required to change their instructional strategies to meet the needs of the digital learners, and make learning more fun and relevant to them. The ideas of increasing the speed of instruction, and to include multi tasking and networking promoting brain research to impact teaching would be strongly enforced and the progress would be regularly monitored.

I strongly feel that practicing what is addressed in these three videos would make a school ready to face the 21st century. Time is running out so as an administrators it is imperative that these topics are first and foremost in the educators mind at all times, and they work hard to change their styles and approach to teaching the text.  Rich Baranuik said in his video " the 21st century is going to demand that we liberate the textbook pages and open them so they can be modified, changed and improved by the second". I agree with Sir Ken Robinson that we need to get serious about the second climate crisis, not of natural resources but human resources. He and Jamie Oliver further believe that we have sold ourselves to a fast food model of education and it is impoverishing our spirits and energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies. We have to keep in mind that our students world now demands new skills and we have to continuously ask ourselves the questions 'are we teaching them those skills?' 'would our school be ready to welcome the 21st century'?

As I was extremely impressed by Sir Ken Robinson, I found a video that expressed to us how we need to open up our minds and be creative and explain what is creativity. This video should help educators understand the importance of letting go of set ideas, learning styles and methods and to search within ourselves on how we can change our outlook by having confidence in our creativity.The link to the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63NTB7oObtw&feature=related