C4T #4

For my final C4T post I was assigned Dr. Scott McLeod, who is the director of innovation at Prairie Lakes AEA in Iowa. Aside from that title, Dr. McLeod has many aliases;"blogger, associate professor,idea generator, etc". (http://scottmcleod.net/) A few weeks back we were asked to view a few of his blog posts, comment on them, and lastly write about them in our own blog. At that point, I had no clue that he would be assigned as my last C4T, but it didn't matter because I was hooked to his blog Dangerously Irrelevant instantly. From there I discovered CASTLE, The Center for Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education, where Dr. McLeod is also a director. CASTLE also has publications titled CASTLE briefs which are extremely beneficial to not only the intended audience (administrators), but the author themselves. I selected to do a CASTLE brief for another assignment in EDM and I found myself asking more questions than I had approved length for (up to 2,000 words). Since the assignment was targeted towards elementary students, I shortened it to a few questions and simply addressed a broad question. Writing that inspired me to also write an email the MCPSS Technology staff with a variety of questions, which I haven't received a reply to as of today.

The first of Dr. McLeod's posts that I commented on was titled "What does the research say about school one-to-one computing initiatives" which discussed the re-issue of (and lead me to) his CASTLE site. The re-issue contained the revised edition of the CASTLE brief template. My comment to Dr. McLeod was an introduction of myself and the reason for my comment. I then explained to him that I am still a fan of the "old fashioned" way of teaching, yet I plan to implement a large amount of technology within my classroom. I thanked him for providing a valuable blog containing many resources that encouraged me to add him to my PLN.

My 2nd comment went to the post titled "Blaming Students and Technology instead of us". In this post he addressed a comment left on another of his posts by a 12th grade, AP English teacher. Summarizing the post, the teacher stood back and observed his classroom one day and found that not one of them was engaged in the lecture being presented. He basically blamed all of the gadgets being used by his students;net books, ipods, etc on their non interest. He states that technology needs to be used properly and not in a form that causes distractions. I think he even refers to the gadgets as a "hindrance".
When explaining in my comment that I could see both sides of the story because I am a STUDENT studying to become a TEACHER, I felt like someone with the little devil on the left shoulder and the little angel on the right one. Who wins? I more or less agree with the fact that the teacher should take control of his classroom with more engaging ways of teaching the students. With him being an AP teacher, he should realize that these particular children need to be challenged not spray painted with lectures and note taking.