"What the Future Holds"

Chapter 9 of The Connected Educator was called “What the Future Holds”. It states that Connected Learners know that the internet is not only a great curriculum resource, but even more, a learning resource. The web is used to find people, share insights, opinions, and exchange ideas. As Psychologist and computer scientist Roger Schank states, learning is about adding new knowledge to existing understandings. It is also understanding that we sometimes have to unlearn, to learn new material. This then allows us to be able to innovate.When you are thinking about change in education and technology, you must change everything about how you have learned. Four core components should be kept in mind when you understand what change means: Knowledge, Pedagogy, Connections and Capacity. We are lucky enough to live in a time where technology offers integration in learning and education. We cannot simply just read this book and leave all the information behind. We have to bring what we learned with us in order to be successful in the real world.

This past week we had a Google Hangout with Robyn Hrivnatz, who is the Marketing and Educator Programs Manager for US EDU for Microsoft. Although she is in the Education department, she talked a lot about social media and technology. She said it is very 
important to use and watch social media to understand what the competition is doing. It will also be beneficial in making the right business decision. Being an employee at Microsoft, she said she is able to post freely, but must make it known that she works with Microsoft. Therefore, she is not allowed to share anything on disclosure, and was trained. Robyn actually transitioned from education to tech, having a minor in computer sciences. She changed her career because she explained that she loves the “pluther” of information out there that we can learn about. Video technology is one of her favorites, which I thought was pretty cool because I love video technology as well. She admitted that she misses having that student-teacher connection, but she loves her job and is happy where she is.

For the duration of class, we were told to get into groups and were each handed a Makey Makey box. We were told to put it together, with no instructions. It was hard at first because we all didn’t know where to start. We then decided to plug in the USB to the computer and connected it to the Makey Makey board. After some trial and error we figured everything out. We used items that included bananas, play-doh and aluminum foil. It was a fun group activity and luckily I had a very hardworking, easygoing group.