Prenskys brain gain seems to me to be allowing the students to learn by way of technology only. To listen to the students and to think with an UP/Down mentality dealing with the students. He says we should future-cate, not pastu-cate. I did enjoy the video and he had some very good points, but I have to disagree with him on some very important issues. We need to keep reminding the students and teaching the them about the past. We haven’t always had technology, especially the technology of today, but we cannot, and dare not forget that people actually did survive without it. I do agree in part, that listening to what the students want to learn is important and leads to student engagement and student engagement leads to brain gain. I did find it interesting that, although the video was about brain gain, he did not mention brain gain that much in the video. I did like his idea of using technology more as an educational tool and that the students of today learn in this way. Their brains are tied to the technology. If they lose their smart phone, it is as if they have lost part of their brain. From a teaching perspective, I suppose this is good. But this is also bad. It is bad in that students cannot and should not use technology as a crutch. Say they go to the library to check out a book and the computer is down. They can still use the catalog to find it. Yes, it may take longer, but the books are still cataloged and can still be found, even without technology.
I do not think it is a good idea to just use technology to teach. Technology is still just another tool, after all. And on the flip side, teachers should not be wary of using technology in any aspect of instruction. Again, this involves engagement. And teachers need to know how to engage.
As a non traditional student. Zhao’s presentation spoke more to my situation more than other videos have. Zhao appears to be more sensitive and be acclimating to those with creative minds. What he calls the new middle class. The people that are creative. If you are Unemployed, get creative. We need to besome creative and to teach our students and children to become creators, especially job creators. And technology can be used in this endeavor. Although he is kinda boring, I agree with him more than Prensky. Not that Prensky doesn’t have valid points, especially when dealing with students and figuring out how the student wants to learn. And even though Prensky makes sense, I so prefer Zhao’s thought process. I suppose because I am in that similar type situation. I am in the position of having to create a situation for myself in order to be more hire-able for a particular position, in my case, using my real world learning in the class room to better myself. Which coincidently, is the subject of the text: Using digital tool and practical strategies for successful implementation. Like me, some students are having to use there real world learning in order to better themselves and make themselves invaluable.
I have created 2 mindmaps because I did not like the first one that was made, but I including it because I spent time making it. Both are on the subject of technology education or more precisely, not forgetting the past while we seek the future.
Update: I have added more pages to Provide a Pathway to Success, and each page is linked to a video. But, unfortunately, Canva does not support this, as of yet. So, all I have is images with text. I am going to leave the images linked to videos so when the technology catches up to my presentation, then they will work or should work. No timetable on when that will happen. I also tried to link the other pages to the images on the main page, but, it appears, Canva doesn’t support this function either.
Update 2: I was on the wrong blog. This stuff is getting confusing. This mindmap was created using www.popplet.com. It is a little more extensive and still a work in progress, meaning that I have set ip up so that if I need to add to it or take away from it in the future, it will not change the topic. It is just that minds change as different learning happens, and I reserve the right to alter my opinion at a later date. In the mean time, welcome to my new mind map:
This second presentation has some of the videos that I tried to use for the Canva presentation. It is a simple presentation that exhibits my opinion of the Prensky video. To put it plainly, I felt that Prensky was disregarding the past technology just because the students of today do not learn in the same way they did. And that we need to cater to the way students learn today and not use the technology of the past. I know first had that this is not a correct assumption to make. Just because something is old, doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from it and that students will not accept learning about the technology of the past. Quite to the contrary, I find the students to be quite enamored with the technology of the past and I strongly disagree with that mindset in the classroom and do not consider it to be Brain Gain at all. Because if you forsake the past to learn the present and future, it is not Brain Gain, it is Brain Loss.
