Are workshops hitting the mark?

Today during the ACEC workshops which we attended, we found that they just relayed information that is easily accessible on the Internet.

The first workshop: YouTube in the classroom, was how to use YouTube and what all the different buttons do. Do teachers really need this? For children growing up in this era technology is their life, including YouTube. A teacher doesn’t need to take a ‘How To Course’ for YouTube, when they have the experts right in front of them – the students. The students are also there to help. I was disappointed that the workshop didn’t show how YouTube is beneficial to people’s learning and how it could be used as a learning tool.

It was really clear to me that the teachers in the workshop were enjoying themselves and found the information useful, but form a student perspective, I feel that the teachers could have used this time more effictly – the students have all the answers when it comes to YouTube.

The other two workshops: ‘parents opinion towards the use of iPads’ and ‘iPads and early creativity and collaboration’. Those workshops just relayed information from studies that they conducted. The information from the studies was telling the audience the facts, not how to apply the ideas conveyed. It would of been great if the speakers talked not just what they did but how others can apply it to their classes.

From a students perspective it is great to teach the teacher something because we are all at school to help one another, whilst learning something.

By Hannah year 11 and Brandon year 11, 1/10/14.

Reflection from our time with Alec Couros

We’re Isbah aimagend Deepali . We are year ten students and are part of the digital leaders thought group. We spent our morning with Alec Couros. Alec gave a presentation about social media and technology that we have access to in order to connect with others on a bigger scale. He talks about the positive side to it and is trying to persuade people to use technology, be part of technology and include technology in education. No doubt it was a brilliant presentation (it was really engaging and including loads of funny videos) but, we personally, believe that he didn’t show the negative side of using technology in schools and classrooms. The negative side can result in low self-esteem, cyber-bullying and privacy issues because everything will be on social media the individuals may have low communication skills. These are just some of the issues which can result from using technology in school. We believe that technology has a bright side to it but involving it in schools can be a big issue. The idea of using technology is good, but will this help every single student? Can it help all students and will it be a good idea? As young students, we have millions of questions in our mind which don’t all have a one answer to it, as everyone has a different opinion.

We think peoimageple with different ways of learning should be respected and should be given a fair chance to prove their ability without using too much technology, after all we are all great individuals. Even though Mr Couros didn’t mention solutions to some of the downsides (negatives) of using too much technology, his arguments to try and persuade people to use technology to share their views was worth applauding. The thing we liked best about his presentation was that he engaged the viewers as well as getting his point across. There is no doubt that technology improves literacy skills and teaches people something new every day. Mr Couros used great examples during his presentation, and even included examples where tech hindered us, but gave inspiring, fun examples of the amazing tech can do. However, we still do not completely agree with the fact that technology should continuously be used to learn as we can still learn by talking to different people face to face. This can help improve communication skills and boost self-esteem, which will help a lot when looking for careers to do with people, for example- teaching.