Developing A Healthy Learning Environment With Technology

As I think back to the times when I was most interested in school, I remember it being when interactivity was involved in the classroom. The best way that interactivity was involved was through technology. In my sixth grade math class, we would play “quiz-up”, which was a buzz in answer game in which the students could anonymously post their answers. This lead to a sense of security, where I would not worry if I got something wrong because no one would know, and I was also awarded the ability to see if I was getting my answers correct. I have never been so engaged in a subject that I was so disinterested in, and this is why it is important to place technology within the classroom.

http://www.library.illinois.edu/diglit/images/diglit.jpg

 

Making our students become “digitally literate” will allow them to become more focused on school, as well as be able to see learning through a different lens. Typically students associate technology with leisure time, and this allows them to relax. This will be beneficial to the average learner in their classroom. The articles that I am sharing display how to incorporate social media into the classroom, and allow students to realize the pros and cons of using the internet to learn. An example of using the internet in a positive manner is through using twitter. In the article, the idea of tweeting as if you are a character in a piece of literature is used as an example. This allows the students an outlet for creativity, and humor, which will thus allow them to be more engaged in the classroom. This engagement will lead to better knowledge retention because the students are actually enjoying what they are learning.

https://cleach.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/classroom1.jpg

In the article, the students were also shown some of the negatives of learning with the internet, which may show them the cons of free knowledge. They were shown this with a funny video clip which is presented below, and while it displayed the negatives of the internet, it did it with a funny anecdote in order to further help the students learn.

Items such as quiz-up and “Google A day” will help students in their learning environment. This increased emphasis on interactive learning will allow students to become more engaged in their learning. This increased engagement in learning will make for a happier, and therefore smarter, student.

The Importance of Accessibility in Education

Accessibility. Accessibility is the beauty of the internet in today’s day and age. Without the burgeoning success of the internet, we would not have as knowledgable a society as we have today. Restraints are taken off of learning with developments such as the DIgital Public Library of America, P2PU, and Open Culture. Never before has such a broad spectrum of people been able to access literature, and educational courses from all around the world.

Open Culture:

What is one of the biggest issues with attending university for four years? One may not be able to explore as wide an array of classes as they so desire due to time constraints, or monetary reasons. With U.C. Berkley, Yale, and Stanford now uploading lecture content to sites such as iTunes, it accommodates student’s desires to learn outside of their major. U.C. Berkley itself has over 120 million uploads of lecture material for their students. This extra access allows for a generally more well rounded student populous. What “Open Culture” itself is, is the largest free educational database developed by Dan Colman PHD (Stanford Graduate 1997). This database offers over 350 free courses, and thousands of hours of educational audio content. This kind of information was much more difficult to garner in the pre-internet era.

“I’m trying to bring the best food ideas to the rest of the world. There currently exists too much of a gap between university world and the general public.”- Dr. Dan Colaman

P2PU: (Peer to Peer University)

“a grassroots open education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls and gives learners recognition for their achievements.” – John Britton

John Britton is the developer of P2PU, and a dropout of RPI university. His goal was to develop an open education network on the internet where people could learn from each other. This provides for an open network of people to interact with each-other and share their knowledge. This type of medium is helpful in today’s age of the internet.

Link to P2PU video: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/05/14/how-the-internet-is-revolutionizing-education/

The internet has provided an extensive amount of easily accessible free information for the general public. These new mediums of accessing information gives our society more free opportunities to learn than ever before, which provides for well-rounded people.