Blog Quiz: Teaching in Global 3.0

Task #2 - What a College Education "Buys"

Apparently a college education isn't something for everyone - and at the risk of offending someone, I tend to agree. Yet, I wonder why saying that would offend anyone at all. Look at Will and the fact that he doesn't want to go any further in his education (am I saying that he feels that his education up to this point was a waste? Absolutely not!). He simply feels there are other ways of educating students besides putting them in a classroom surrounded by four walls. A great number of adults from my parent's generation were self-taught - maybe not in the realm of technology, but their classroom was their life. And now today with all the means of learning at someone's disposal the kind of education all of us need has drastically changed.

At the same time. I question whether it's students who do not possess the "intellectual capacity to reach basic achievement levels" or teachers who do not teach in a way that makes the education our children are getting useful - are we teaching them to be consumers of information who know what information they need to know and can navigate the technology at their hands to obtain this information? Freidman would agree it's important for them to be able to navigate the information network - knowing how to find the information they need to know.

And having said all of that, the graphics in this article say that one of the occupations with the most job openings for college graduates is post-secondary teachers. So, if college is not for everyone I would guess the numbers in this category would fall dramatically. We certainly don't need lots more college professors if our children are not really capable of a college education. If everyone decides this is true, then many people could find themselves without jobs when they get their diplomas. Scary thought!!!

Task #3 - RSS: A "Killer App"

I added several RSS feeds to my blog - it was fairly easy to do if you followed the directions that Will gave (it must be easy if I thought it was)! I also found something interesting in our text - he talks about "vanity feeds" so you can track what other people are saying about your blog and "being alerted whenever someone is linking back to you". I guess this must be how Will found Savannah's blog and has come to be such a big fan. I think I'll create my own Technorati and see who is checking out my blog.

I would use the RSS with my students to help them with their research papers - great idea having things come to you 24/7 about a subject you are interested in researching. You could also set up a website and have your students use the RSS to access all of the information in their blog. I want to do it myself with eSchool News - right now I have all of the current articles e-mailed to me at my Cortland address. Who knew that I could simply have access to this website on my blog? I learn something new every single day in this class. I can't wait to try this and see if I can make it work - freeing up e-mail space on my Cortland account.