Video Reactions

Before today, I had never seen any videos that go into depth about the use of electronics in the classroom so I had an easy time selecting videos to watch.

The first video that I focused on was "Networked Student" by Wendy Drexler. This video demonstrates how a teacher can run a classroom entirely electronically by encouraging students to find and utilize resources available to them on the internet. The student in this example found his success by combing the internet for lectures and contact information and by creating his own log of resources that would eventually pay off to another student. The idea of guiding students to learn by themselves is a beautiful idea in that it asks students to be self-educating and to learn the value of the different resources available. However, I think that this is something that would only work with very advanced students and for a short period of time. I think that one-on-one interaction and hands-on activity in a physical and not technical environment is something that should never be shed from the classroom. The idea of a class that is 2/3 online is a bit unsettling to me and I never considered myself to be a traditionalist. Also, I feel that this manner of structuring a classroom requires extremely disciplined students - I am already struggling with an online course with explicit rules because of the distractions of the internet; I can't imagine a student with a more abstract purpose getting a whole lot done without an extreme amount of dedication.
I believe that this is a great concept but that it has to be applied only occasionally and to very advanced students.

The second video that I viewed is "Classroom of Tomorrow", a more abstract film festival interpretation of what schools will look like in the future with the advancement of technology.

I think that the idea of a fully digital classroom is beautiful and that it is trendy because people believe that it shows advancement, but when I see an image of a large group of children on ipads I either assume that they are:

a.) playing games that they should not be or
b.) online shopping.
I might be a pessimist because of how I have seen ipads used thus far; the only children I have seen use them did the above two. However, I am unsure as to whether more advanced is necessarily better and I think that pen and paper note taking can be, at least for me, much more effective than typed note taking. This film was remarkable, but I feel that there is a lot of optimism involved. How can one insure that students "taking notes" on their phones are not actually texting one another? How can controls be established to keep students on task when they have a wide variety of resources available to them? 

I fully support the use of technology in the classroom but I fear that a lot of depictions of widespread usage are very optimistic. Furthermore, if the children in my classroom cannot take proper care of hardcover textbooks, is giving them an iPad the best choice? I think that iPad technology and Smart Boards and the like are wonderful, but I have to wonder exactly where they belong and where they do not in the language classroom.