#10 Videos on 21st Century Education

1. Classrooms of Tomorrow- This video was interesting, because it was completely out of the ordinary to see a classroom where every student is on their cell phone doing work and the teacher is completely okay with it. Growing up, if you had your cell phone out in class then you would get it taken away. I do appreciate that the video suggested how high tech the classroom will be, because there are so many new ways to utilize technology in the classroom. I do, however, think it is a little bit far fetched to have that amount of technology in the classroom at this point in time. The amount of funding it would take to ensure that every student had access to the same level of technology is not very practical right now.

2.The Voice of the Active Learner- Education from a Digital Native's Perspective- This video was something that I have always considered very important. There is an increase of students that get their post-secondary education online now. I believe that eventually a lot of high school students will be given the option to take classes online. I think that this video was an accurate portrait of the "active learner", but I do believe that some students will not succeed as easily online. 

3.The Future Starts Now- This video discusses ICT, and how prevalent it is now, but how many teachers and districts are wary about using it in the classroom. They discussed how in Norway they spend a lot of money on school and still have average testing.  In their society, they have a lot of people dropping out of high school and they claim that they will motivate students and create a knowledge-based society. They believe that using technology will make their education better. I agree with this, but it's sometimes hard to train teachers and give them the resources to educate their students.

4. Designing Schools for 21st Century Learning- This video tackles the architecture and design side of learning and schools. He claims that innovation and creativity are the keys to success. Studies show that feeling secure is the key element to learning, and stimulus rich environments help learning.  His goal is to include that in schools. This video states that children need to be given the opportunity to be independent thinkers. I find this video incredibly interesting, and I wish that all schools were designed for learning like this.  I think that a lot of the problem with this video is that the funding isn't there to create all of these wonderful aspects into a normal district.

5. Tools and Resources for The 21st Century Education- I like the resources listed in this video, I wasn't aware of a lot of them. I will definitely use this video in my classroom. I believe that a lot of teachers are very unaware of all of the resources that are out there to make our lives easier.

6. A Vision of 21st Century Teaching- I enjoyed this video, because it showed the expectations and ideas that educators have of education in the 21st century. We are at an interesting point in history and there are a lot of improvements that we can make to give students coming up the best education that has been available before.