Blog Post 8

Richard Miller: This Is How We Dream Part 1



Richard Miller is a Educator in the English Department at Rutgers University in New Jersey. His video “This Is How We Dream Part 1” starts out talking about in his childhood family he was surrounded with books. This was not a bad thing because he loved books and often read them growing up. Reading is what ended up inspiring him to an English teacher. When I was younger my mother also instilled the fact that reading is very important, and would make me read on a daily basis. Now looking back I am very thankful for that.

He later goes on to talk about how reading and writing is evolving. Once where you had to rent books from a library and write with pen in paper is now something of the past. In my two and half years of college not one time have I had to turn in a paper that was not typed. For one thing teachers don’t have to try and read sloppy hand writing and a typed paper just looks nice and neat. Another advantage of typing a paper is that computers have spell check and will find grammatical errors in your writing for you. Also I have rarely used any of the Libraries that we have on campus. I find it much easier, as do many students I have talked to, to just research the information at home on my personal computer. Not only is this easier but I believe it to be much faster.

Richard Miller: This Is How We Dream Part 2

In Part Two of Richard Miller's video he talks about how do we incorporate technology in to today's classroom. Students no longer want to read off a piece of paper, they would rather have visual aids to go along with their readings. Kids as young as elementary grades are being taught to use computer in school. This was something that I was not introduced to until I was in middle school. Kids are fascinated with technology and this could be used as a great instrument in keeping kids of all ages interested in learning in schools. Educators have no choice, in my opinion, to not use some form of technology in their classrooms. Actually I would go as far as to say that they should use as much technology that they can possibly get their hands on.

EDM310 is Different

Chipper was a student who just thought she had it all figured out. Her biggest problem was being a procrastinator. In EDM 310 Procrastinating will put you in a hole that you will not be able to get out. When they say 9 hours a week, they don’t mean wait till Sunday at try to finish everything in 9 hours. If this is your philosophy in this class good luck. Many times I have spent a lot more than just 9 hours working on our projects, comments, and blog post every week. If I had to make a video like this one I would try to focus it on something like the Importance on coming to the lab for help. Many times I have got stuck on projects and needed help in which the lab was extremely helpful in explain everything in detail and not doing it for me but showing me how to do it so that I could do it myself in the future.

Learn to Change, Change to Learn

One of the very last things that was on this video was “the death of education, but the dawn of learning”, this statement really summed up the whole entire video for me. This video talks about the fact that we shouldn’t be making our children memorize facts that they will forget after there next test and never have to use again in their life. We should be teaching our children how to find information, use the information, and communicate with other students. We should be letting our student’s use social networking for educational purposes and using the internet for researching and finding important information they need in class. Teaching our children useful stuff they will need in the real world such as jobs after school, not just making them memorize stuff for standardized test.

The Secret Powers of Time by Philip Zambardo

This video was very well put together and the way everything was being drawn out really kept me entertained and interested in what was being said. One disturbing fact that stood out to me was that one child drops out of school every nine seconds. Peoples life’s are busy and a lot of people should take more time to sit down and at least have a family dinner a couple times a week if nothing less. Family has always been very important to me and no matter how busy my schedule is I try to always make to time to call both my parents and my siblings. Although I would like to see them more than I do, it is just not really something I can do with my schedule as busy as it stays with school and work.



Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us :by David Pink

What motivates people...? Clearly many people in the world are motivated by money but this shows a different aspect than most people would think. He gives three factors that lead to better performance as well as personal satisfaction, Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. Paying people more does not motivate them more, but these three thing are what can motivate people to do astonishing workk.