Blog 6: Dr. Shirin Shafiei Ebrahimi TedTalk
- Use of Technology in Education
Dr. Shirin Shafiei Ebrahimi begins by showing a video of what education could look like in the future. Although this would most likely be a reality decades away, I couldn't help but think to myself, "Whoa! That's so cool."
There are many ideas thrown out in this video without much explanation. However, I felt like it would be best to use this video for my blog because there's plenty to deconstruct!
The presenter talks about the benefits of technology, how cost factors in, and blended learning. She discusses that the aim of recent technology based education is personalized learning, the ability for all students to learn at their own pace. They could use the internet to learn about whatever they want, whenever they want. She talks about the benefits being:
- Unlimited ways to use apps provided through technology
- Easily accessible
- Facilitates education
- Improve teaching and learning
- Improves the sense of creativity
- Makes you more innovative
- Technology is the language the students of this generation love to speak.
- Makes communication easy. Students can communicate with each other, their teachers, and can share their thoughts and opinions.
Ultimately, she says that this is what education wants. As a side note, I found it interesting that she used the 4 terms that we have as working definitions in this course.
It's at this point of the video that the presenter discusses the downfall, the cost. When I was watching the video at the beginning of what a 100% technological world would look like, my first thought was, "Who's paying for this?" She discusses that a technology driven classroom is an expensive classroom, and there's only one solution to this: Blended Learning. Blended learning is when you integrate technology into the classroom. In other words, use technology to help learn, not teach. Use technology as a tool, not a teacher. The only way to do this, is to have a good teacher. This teacher has to have a good understanding of the knowledge and how to use the technology and when to integrate it.
In summary, she discusses 3 elements of her TedTalk:
- There needs to be an interrelationship between each other (the learner, the teacher, and technology).
- The learning process would be smoother and more efficient with technology.
- Technology will never take the place of good teachers.
Question to myself: Does this video help my overall research?
- It does. It does because it has shown me what a classroom could look like if it was 100% technology based.
- It confirms the idea of technology being extremely beneficial in the classroom if facilitated properly by an educator. In other words, using technology as a tool.
Question to Readers:
I am going to ask you to watch from 1:19 to 3:10 of the video. This is where they show what a classroom could be like in the future! After watching this, what were your immediate thoughts? Do you think that this could be beneficial? Why or why not?
Hi Giulia,
ReplyDeleteThank you for providing not only a concise, accessible summary, but a specific focus for our reading (of your blog) and viewing (of the TED talk). I find this approach to be an excellent way of driving conversation and introducing a particular resources. I feel like, b contrast, my posts are just stuffy rambles. I am interested in how you articulated technology as a language - not sure if this is Ebrahimi's diction or yours, but it's an interesting concept, isn't it? And we can see so much truth to it, as well, just even in youth internet jargon. And, actually, meme culture: I think there's a dialect in and of itself there.
This is now a tangent, but now I'm thinking how interesting it could be to study linguistics NOW, in the age of internet culture... I'm not sure what this would necessarily achieve, but it could show the flexibility and adaptability of language. I'm thinking how, for example, we invented "Google" as a verb, and how we all know to conjugate it as "I google, she/he googles, they google" and "google, googling, googled." And actually, that might show, paradoxically, not just the FLEXIBILITY of our language and grammar, but the preservation of our grammatical rules around conjugation.
Now I'm fascinated.
Can you tell I'm an English teacher? LOL
Thanks for (unintentionally?) finding a new path for me!
Kaitlin
Hi Giulia,
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the video portion about what a 100% technology-based classroom could look like, I have mixed feelings. I personally love new technology. I love watching keynote presentations from different companies to see what new technology is coming out. I was a beta tester for Microsoft briefly and was sent the Microsoft Kinect demo kit before it was even announced. I always want to have the newest and best. However, I have also been burned by early adoption and promises. I bought the first version of the Microsoft Surface RT, which you could not download external programs on to but it was promised that it would have a thriving app store with every program on it there. It did not. I have paid to have upgraded versions of electronics that have these big promises as to what they will do, only to see that the company later gives up on it and the feature goes unused.
So, while I would love to see a fully online classroom like this, I have doubts that it could work as promised and being something that is viable with school district funding and teacher support. However, I do see it as having benefits if it could be used. Students are already familiar with tech and feel comfortable learning in a way that they are used to. The world is moving online, so we should be preparing our students to navigate it.