dear parent
teacher
administrator
board member
don't teach your kids to read
for the Web
to scan
RSS
aggregate
synthesize
don't teach your kids to write
online
pen and paper aren't going anywhere
since when do kids need an audience?
no need to hyperlink
make videos
audio
Flash
no connecting, now
no social networking
or online chat
or comments
or PLNs
blogs and twitter?
how self-absorbed
what a bunch of crap
and definitely, absolutely, resolutely, no cell phones
block it all
lock it down
keep it out
it's evil, you know
there's bad stuff out there
gotta keep your children safe
don't you know collaboration is just another word for cheating?
don't you know how much junk is out there?
haven't you ever heard of sexting?
of cyberbullying?
a computer 24-7? no thanks
I don't want them
creating
sharing
thinking
learning
you know they're just going to look at porn
and hook up with predators
we can't trust them
don't do any of it, please
really
'cause I'm doing all of it with my kids
can't wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or two
can you?
This blog post was great! I agree that if you leave out technology during the learning experience this day in age, the children will be left in the dust to technology. Students need to learn the benefits of the internet and technology. This is really important.
Dr. McLeod,
Hi! My name is Anna Zhuo and I’m a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama! I completely agree with your post. It reminds me of how my dad tried to raise me. I wrote about that in my recent blog post ( Blog Assignment #10 ). I think no one can completely protect the students, children, and ourselves from the exposure to the “corruptions” in the world. Instead of removing internet access, blogging, social networking, reading the web, and etc., we should monitor it. If we remove social networking and internet access, we might as well remove our children from schools and not allow them to go outside the house.
If people are deathly afraid of what their students or children come across on the internet, how is that any different from television, especially with cable access? You can monitor what they watch and you can do the same for the internet. If you remove their internet access, you might as well not allow them to watch TV. Isn’t that right? It’s the same concept. There are misconceptions too. We should promote technology. This is the 21st century. Pencils and papers are almost “pre-historic”. Social networking is a way to help us. Blogging is a way for a student to share their thoughts and ideas. The usage of the internet allows the students to gather resources, learn, and etc. Collaborations means working together, coming up with new ideas, promotes teamwork, and etc. Instead of removing technology, we should be equipped and trained to use it. Once we are equipped and trained to, we can somehow “protect” our students in another way. We need to trust our students as well.
I can go on and on about it! The sarcasm is great.
Regards,
Anna Zhuo.
Hey Dr. McLeod
Im Giorgio Lymon a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed reading your post on “Don’t Teach your Kids This Stuff, Please?. I agree with all the points you made in your post. I just want to point out that from personal experience, I have seen younger kids that parents bought them Leap-pad’s grow up and out smart everyone in their class. Thanks for the interesting post and i look forward to view more.
Giorgio Lymon
#EDM310
Hi Dr. McLeod,
My name is Ashley Zaworski and I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed reading your post and thought that it was quite funny. Although I don’t feel that technology should be the only tool that teachers use, I do feel that it is of extreme importance. I also feel that it is a teacher’s responsibility to inform their students of the different dangers out there when they are using technology. After all, you do want your students to be safe. Your sarcasm was a great way of showing all the positives and negatives that technology has. Great post!!
Hi Dr McLeod,
I am also a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed the sarcasm of your post! I attended the same high school as Clair who left an earlier comment and we were not allowed to have any form of technology on us while on campus. No cell phones, no iPods, no laptops. It was all punishable by detention or worse, so we never experienced the advantages of technology in the classroom. Dr Strange’s class at South Alabama has definitely been eye opening for me and I intend to use what I have learned in my own classroom someday. Like your students, I want mine to have the upper hand in this technologically driven world. Thank you!
Meghan
Dr. McLeod,
My name is Chrissie Todd and I am an EDM 310 student at University of South Alabama. I enjoyed your post and agree wholeheartedly! Technology can be used for so many good things. Sure there are bad things out there too, but we set limits and keep a check on their activity and we can open up a world opportunity to our kids!
Mr. McLeod,
I’m a student in EDM10 at the University of South Alabama and I love your sarcasm! I like how you stated the negative and positive aspects of social networking in a way that people will think the complete opposite of what you are saying. I know I will certainly be using technology in my future teaching years! Great post!
Hello Mr. Mcleod! I am Jasmine Smith and I am a student at the University of South Alabama and I am currently taking EDM310. I found your post very intriguing. I love the facetiousness you had in your writing. Great work!
Hi. I too am a student at the University of South Alabama and am currently taking EDM310. I really enjoyed your sense of playfulness, wit, and sarcasm in this post. A simple way of providing an argument that technology is positive and unavoidable. Thanks for sharing.
I love the way you prove your point. It makes the people saying no technology sound so ridiculous. I grew up hearing no tablets, no laptops, and no cell phones in my high school. It was such a fight for the teachers and administration while they should have been using these items to teach. Thanks for thinking outside of the box to teach and make your points.
You are right! Well, about 90%. Technology can be useful to an educator. That is a fact. It can make discovering new lesson plans or looking up educational videos or even learning something new to teach to a classroom very easy and fast. However, cell phones, facebook, social networking sites, or anything similar is useless in the educational world. Watching someone else’s video or blog on a book does not teach a student what the book is about. The student must read the book his/herself to truly know.
Your contribution and blog was very fun to read. Keep your opinions coming!
I respectfully disagree with your thoughts about social networking, Samantha. I am an educator in the process of getting a Master’s Degree in Educational Technology, and i will soon hold a new job of tech integrationist in my school district. Cell phones can be used in classrooms to do formative assessments (ex: texting in an answer on PollEverywhere). Twitter/Facebook can be wonderful tech tools to collaborate with peers and learn from what others have already created. These types of technology are not going away- in fact, they are just the tip of the iceberg. Instead of banning these types of learning, we should be teaching children (and adults for that matter!) how to use them appropriately.
Hello Dr. McLeod,
I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I found your post to be very interesting. Sure there can be bad things online but there are also great and educational things. Your post was very funny and interesting to read. Thanks,
Gabby Williams
I’m Rebecca and a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I loved this post, and don’t understand how people don’t see the sarcasm. Sometimes it’s hard for people to understand what they don’t know. If they are not around it, then they think it’s bad. People need to see the good that technology does for our kids! Thanks!
-Rebecca Stuart
Dr. McLeod, I am a student at the University of South Alabama in Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class. I think that your post was funny and amusing and correct about the way that the older, non-technologically literate generation feels about having technology in the classroom. Unfortunately though, I don’t think that every one of those opinions are wrong to have. In the world we live in at this moment of time, teachers lecture, students take notes, they memorize the information, and they spit it back up on the test. Some students benefit from this and some don’t. By swapping the system around, having teachers focus on the students learning technology so that the technology can teach the students in the way they want to learn, those students who learned better without technology are now left out and not learning. I think that as teachers if we are going to give students the freedom to learn how they want, then we should not just take away the traditional way of lecture learning for those students who want it.
Hey Dr. McLeod,
I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I enjoyed reading your post about how most people from the generation before us view technology as negative when used in a classroom setting. I like your sense of humor with this post when expressing the good and the bad aspects that technology can present to our students. It is important to educate our students on both sides of the spectrum. You also raise a good question with, what will the next generation come up with.
Hi Dr. McLeod!
I’m Jamie Barbour, one of Dr. Strange’s EDM 310 students at the University of South Alabama. I thought your post on technology in the classroom was spot on. These are all things we need to be teaching the 21st Century student. We also need to teach them the dangers of using social networking as well. A school without technology is just not a school in my opinion. Thanks for the post.
Jamie Barbour
I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama! I really enjoyed your blog post! I thought it was funny not only because it had some crazy ideas in it! I think it is great you gave some good and positive in the post and I also love that you kept it on both sides of the playing field. I mean everyone is going to agree to disagree about the use of in the internet so why not make it funny? I really enjoyed this blog post!
Hi, my name is Kelli Francis! I’m also a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed this post because it makes the traditional way of teaching sound very unsuccessful when one sits down and compares it to project-based learning. While the internet can be dangerous, there is nothing in this world that is completely safe. We may be taking unknown risks using technology, but aren’t the greater things in life obtained from getting up from the bench and taking chances? I think if more educators would branch out, try new teaching methods, and stop holding on to tradition, they will see much better results in the academic achievements in their students. Thanks for your post, and I hope to be able to read more from you in the future!
Hello Dr. McLeod,
I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed reading your post and love your sarcastic tone. There is a TON of junk out there and sometimes I wonder if we should trust children with so much freedom. The entire world is open to them. But, then again, the entire world is open to them! Imagine what sort of amazing things students will be able to do! Technology is all around us and is closing in; there is no possible way to ignore it. The challenge is, not to teach kids about technology (I can guarantee most children can do more on a computer than most adults). It isn’t a question of how to operate it; it’s a question of how to use it! We need to focus on teaching our children and students how to use all the technology and massive amounts of information it comes with safely and effectively.
Hi. I am a student at the University of South Alabama and am currently taking EDM 310. I enjoyed reading your blog post. I think that technology is important and should be used in the classroom. I liked your sense of humor about the positions some people take towards technology. While technology can be used inappropriately, it can also be used for good. I think it is important to incorporate technology into the classroom.
Dr. McLeod,
My name is Phillip Hall and I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I am in EDM 310 with Dr. Strange. I truly enjoyed reading this blog. I have heard so many times from my grandmothers how technology is going to make our brains explode and how they got along just well with paper and pencil. I have heard, with my own ears how the Internet is used for all the wrong reasons. My little brother who is in high school in a county who has computers for all their high school students says that discipline is down since the computers have been given to all the children. Sure, there are some students who will misuse the computers, but these are students who were going to do it no matter what. The benefit of these computer out-way the few students who will misuse them. My younger brother is able to use his computers to download assignments, research for projects, communicate/collaborate with his peers and even learn more about current events. Being able to sync information from IPads, IPhones, IPods and my laptop has made life wonderful. I most enjoyed your last paragraph where you said “cause I’m doing all of it with my children”. The question I think you were asking, is will you and your family/child be left behind. Thanks for sharing your blog with us.
Phillip
I am in EDM 310. The clincher: “don’t do any of it, please
really
’cause I’m doing all of it with my kids
can’t wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or two
can you?” That’s totally the point. During observation at a lower performing school, I saw students totally engrossed in their math programs during computer lab. You could’ve heard a pin drop.
Hey Mr. McLeod,
I am a student at the University of South Alabama in the EDM310 class, I thought your post was great. I have been thinking that technology isn’t really needed in the classroom either. I never used technology in any of my classes growing up either and I’m pretty sure the people that have been creating technology for classrooms haven’t used it either. How could they? I mean they have created it.
Dr. McLeod,
I am a student in EDM310 at University of South Alabama. I loved this post. I know sometimes, when we realize everything that can be done on the internet, it can be scary. Students can get into anything. It can also be a good tool to use if used correctly. We just have to show students how to use it correctly.
I am a student at the University of South Alabama and in EDM 310. I love this post. I believe it to be important to incorporate technology in education. If students are taught how to use technology appropriately, it can be an important learning tool.
My name is John Carpenter. I am a Student enrolled in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I enjoyed your article. I think that technology is the key to the future. Keep working hard!
John Carpenter
I agree 100%!! I think that the reasons given for why teachers don’t use technology are some of the most common and at the same time some of the more ignorant reasons as well.
Dr. McLeod,
I’m an EDM 310 student, and I am so glad we were given your post to read…I loved the sarcasm; it really made your point hit home. I would take a group of students that had been given technology in school over those who only learned for the sake of standardize testing 10 times our of 10.
I am a student at the University of South Alabama in the EDM310 class. I liked how you used satire in your post to prove your point. It was very funny.
Dr. Mcleod,
I am also a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. You did a great job of proving your argument with sarcasm. Technology is here and is here to stay and the sooner we buy into that and teach our students how to use technology the sooner we will help the become successful.
Thank you for the post.
This is a brilliant post! I have heard many people use these excuses and reasons to not use technology in the classroom. I love the sarcasm you use and the points made by it. Technology is a wonderful tool to use in and out of the classroom. Thank you for posting!
Hi, I’m a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I love your post. Your sarcasm really brings your point home! I hope parents take your advice and do these things with their children!
Dr. McLeod,
As many above me, I am also a student at the University of South Alabama, enrolled in Dr. Strange’s EDM 310 course. I found your post quite interesting. I had to read it twice. The first time I found myself wondering whether or not you were for or against the topic. So I read it again, and began to understand more clearly. I love the tone that you use, and how you applied it. Very interesting!
Dr. Mc Leod
I like your post. At first you can’t really detect the sarcastic tone but then at the end, boom you hit the reader with it. I love it though because it is so true I mean a lot of future jobs for our students haven’t been created yet so we need to be teaching students everything we can about technology to help them in the future job market. That is why I love your ending “cant wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or two” because it is b=obvious that your students will.
Hi, my name is Hannah Dickerson and I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I am studying to be a math teacher. I think this post is great! I think all of the traditional ways of teaching are good, but in todays society there are even better ways! Blogging has become something I enjoy and I hope to use it one day when I have a class myself. Not everything on the internet is bad, like you said. It has some advantages and some disadvantages. Thanks for letting me read your blog! I really enjoyed it!
Hi, my name is Hannah Dickerson and I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I am studying to be a math teacher. I think this post is great! I think all of the traditional ways of teaching are good, but in todays society there are even better ways! Blogging has become something I enjoy and I hope to use it one day when I have a class myself. Not everything on the internet is bad, like you said. It has some advantages and some disadvantages. Thanks for letting me read your blog! I really enjoyed it!
Hannah Dickerson
Hi, I’m a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I enjoyed the sarcasm of your post! It really makes your point stand out
Hi, my name is Sarah Lindley and I’m a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I love your facetious approach to such an important topic in education today. I think that technology is such an crucial part of the world and that is so underutilized in schools, mostly because most educators are too timid or too arrogant to learn it. I really hope that in the future technology, and what it can teach students, is more readily embraced. Thank you for such an amazing post!
Hello, Dr. McLeod! I’m in Dr. Strange’s EDM310 class at the University of South Alabama. I can really appreciate good use of sarcasm, and this post uses it perfectly. It’s a shame how our school systems seem to demonize technology. Even the media is always talking about the things that can go wrong when using technology. Instead, they should be talking about all the good uses of technology and how useful it is for education! Here’s hoping people read this post and realize that technology isn’t something to be afraid of, and it definitely isn’t something to discourage kids from using.
Hi, I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I found your post both interesting, amusing, and sarcastic. I found some points I agreed with and others not so much. I am not an advocate of full technology in the classrooms though. Good luck with it!
My name is Shelby Day from the University of South Alabama. For my class EDM 310. When I looked over this post I was unsure if it was sarcasm or not. I hope it really is because technology can be such a useful tool in the classroom!
Shelby Day
Twitter: @Miss_ShelbyD
Blog: http://dayshelbyedm310.blogspot.com/
Dr. Mcleod,
I love your use of sarcasm to convey your meaning! I do not think that technology is the only way to learn but I think it should be taught and used in the classroom. Along with that comes responsibility and learning what can happen if it is used wrong!
Hey! My name is Ciara Deese, and I am a student in EDM310 at the University of South Alabama. I really enjoyed this post. At my school, all electronic devices were banned so I didn’t have much practice with them. My parents believed that all the new technology would do is let me find new ways to sneak around and do things behind their back. It definitely affected me when it came to knowing how to do things in college. I wish I would have been more exposed to these things at a younger age.
I am a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama, and I enjoyed this post as well as many of your other posts. I am constantly preaching on my blog about moving forward and progressing with the technology we have today. Future students will be technologically savvy no matter what, so we must learn how to use the technology to our advantage!
I think every teacher and parent should monitor kids while using the web. There are many different dangerous things that can be avioded, as long as there is supervision.
I think the internet is a great source for learning,if teachers and parents are supervising. There are a lot of things on the internet I wouldn’t want my kids to see.
Hi Mr McLeod, My name is Ashton DeMouy and I really enjoyed your post. At first I was pretty confused but then I caught your sarcasm! I loved it!
Thank you,
Ashton DeMouy
Hi!
My name is Wannetta, and I am a student at the University of South Alabama taking Dr. Strange’s EDM310 Micro computing course. I like your approach on delivering this message. I agree that technology makes life easier. It just saddens me when I look over to see a family all glued to their phones and iPads around a dinner table. If discussed and used safely, technology can be an amazing tool to help us discover, learn, and branch out. Keep up the good work!
Surprise! It’s another EDM310 student from the University of South Alabama. Dr. McLeod, I thought your post was amazing! The structure grabbed my attention from the beginning but the use of sarcasm really emphasized the point. Before taking this course, I did not truly understand the importance of technology in education. I am looking forward to the challenge of integrating technology into my classroom. I want to use it as a tool to enhance my teaching and to help engage students in learning, not only in the classroom, but across the globe. I like the bring it on attitude at the end. Thank you for writing this post. Wonder what alien picture I will get when I submit my comment?
Dr. McLeod, I really appreciate the work that you have put into making education as effective as possible. As a future educator studying at the University of South Alabama, I am excited about the opportunities I will have to make a difference in the lives of so many. Again thank you!