What can I say? I am becoming a Michael Wesch fan. With this video on the anthropology of YouTube, Wesch has made me a believer in the website. I have always thought of YouTube as a tool to get information, therefore YouTube and I have had a relationship that you might call one sided. I take what I need, I embed the video in my lesson and I leave. I don't subscribe; I don't watch channels, or leave comments on the videos. It wasn't until after seeing this video that I began to understand the human aspect and the culture of YouTube. I believe that is exactly Wesch's message here that it is a community. Just when people started saying that all we do is isolate ourselves in our houses and play video games or surf the web is when we started to see a way that the entire world could come together as a community. This YouTube culture emerged at a time when people were starting to feel like they wanted to connect with people even further then in text. With webcams, people can connect with an endless amount of people from the privacy of their own bedrooms. Wesch describes a couple of the phenomenon that come up with essentially speaking to yourself and at the same time potentially everyone in the world with internet access at the same time. In terms of learning and teaching, I think YouTube is a great way to see another's perspective or another way of explaining a concept. Students can see multiple viewpoints on a particular subject; suddenly the student goes from one teacher to theoretically millions of teachers. There is a lot of junk and drama on YouTube as well though. I would just say that there is a life lesson there that can be taught. Drama and junk can be found anywhere and students should learn the value of being a critical thinker and choosing their sources wisely. I was inspired by the ways that Wesch shows human connections and human movements in this video. It was very interesting to see the evolution of YouTube from a cultural perspective and Michael Wesch is such an unassuming and eloquent organizer of information that this video was a joy to watch and learn from. When thinking about application in my own classroom I would love to do a project where students raise awareness on a hot topic and put the video on YouTube. They could learn about digital citizenship while learning to take a stand and make a statement about important issues in the world today. I guess I will have to strengthen my relationship with YouTube myself so that I can practice what I teach. Maybe I will be staring into that tiny glass dot sooner that I had thought.
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If you talk to any teacher that has been teaching for the past 20 years or more, you are bound to find the majority of them are desensitized to paradigms shifts in education. These educators are either on the front lines fighting Common Core or in the back of the class doing the same as they always have and just waiting passively for the next shift to come about. I was interested to hear that it isn't just the US that is desperately searching for a new education system for their children. It makes sense though, that everyone, everywhere are having to come up with a way to legitimize standardized education in light of the world's resources being at everyone's fingertips. Sir Ken Robinson points out that children today are challenging the purpose of having to go to school at all. That they are actually just in this opinion because now a days having a degree doesn't guarantee you the american dream. The problem as Robinson explains is that everyone's answer to this search for a new paradigm is to raise standards of education. Instead of this dime a dozen answer, Robinson asks us to consider promoting divergent thinking. This divergent thinking is defined by Robinson not as creativity, but as having many different answers and varied pathways to those answers. Education thus far has trained our students to having to know the "one true answer". This is oh so evident in my current classroom. We judge our teachers on how many of our student's know that one true answer. We judge our schools on how many students know the one true answer. This leaves us with a mob of sameness and zero growth. Nobody ever got anywhere with zero growth. I cannot speak for those teachers that have been jaded by going through so many of the "new and improved" ways of educating our students. I can only say that as a new teacher coming into the field in such an dynamic time, I am so excited that people like Sir Ken Robinson and his divergent thinking about education are speaking on the behalf my future students and my future career. I would be proud to be a teacher in Robinson's vision of educational growth.
Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able. A TEDx talk by Michael WeschI have never witnessed someone like Michael Wesch before seeing this Tedx talk from 2010. I have never seen a public speaker so acquiscent, unassuming, humble and ordinary deliver such a powerful, formulated, and downright poetic lecture. I agree with everything that Wesch says in his talk. With the "world on fire" as it is, there is this glimmer of hope shinning in the horizon called the internet. Wesch shows us how social media can save the world. What? But isn't social media the ultimate downfall of our children these days? Isn't it the biggest distraction for our teenagers and why they can't seem to get any homework done? Yes, probably, but social media and the shear ability to get things publicized and heard has brought the global community that much smaller and tighter knit. Wesch talks about how technology makes it easy to Connect, Organize, Share, Collect , Collaborate and Publish. Wesch shows us some of these advances and great works in his lecture. He tries to implement these things into his classroom whenever possible so that students stop asking the wrong questions like "what is going to be on the test", and start asking the right ones like "How can I connect, organize, share, collect collaborate, and publish ideas and works to tackle this world on fire ". When I was introduced to this lecture I was asked to think about what I could do in my classroom with asking my students to connect, organize, share, collect, collaborate and publish. I know for absolute certainty that I will show this video to my students each and every year and the above image will hang in my classroom. I will ask my class how they want to incorporate these things into their learning and see where they take it. I can't wait to see what they come up with. |
Megan BallacheyClassical educator of Anatomy & Physiology, Biology, and AP Biology for Temecula Preparatory School. Archives
May 2015
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