I really enjoyed the talk we had today with Alec Couros. His discussion was very informative and touched on many points that I would like see happen in my own practice. I really connected with a couple pieces he talked about. First was the idea that many of our students today are suffering from major social anxiety that they face on a daily basis. Children can be so outgoing until the moment they have to stand in front of group and explain their ideas or opinions. I especially see this more and more from younger students when I am teaching. The light bulb moment came to me when Alec was talking about how students can be relatively anxious kids but when they step in front a camera to record a Youtube video that seems to fade away. He mentioned that how children have the ability to cut and edit how they appear and polish a final cut to show people. The students have the ability to redesign themselves and their appearances to their peers.

 

Another point that resonated with me was how much Youtube plays a role in self-learning. It is very common practice today for anyone to teach himself or herself a new skill via Youtube. I have found myself teaching myself car maintenance, guitar licks and assortment of other things. This is such an effective way of learning and it is becoming more and more the norm. This really struck me, as students should have time to research and development their own skills that they want to work on. As we know, when a student has the ability to work on skills that have personal meaning to them and are passion projects their attention and dedication to the learning is much higher. I would like to implement this more and more into my practice.

 

My focus topic is becoming more towards parent involvement in their child’s education and how we as teachers can aid in this transition. Alec brought up so many points in his presentation that would promote this behaviour. The idea that Youtube is so accessible and students could bring some of their learning home to share with their parents and get them involved would be a great step. I loved the idea of letting students use technology to solve deeper contextual questions that could not be answered through Google but rather using the internet to aid in using the processes to solve the problem.

 

As an elementary educator, it will be the forefront of teaching students to be responsible when using social media and becoming aware and adept to the “Social Ecosystem” of the social media world. Alec highlighted the importance of this in his presentation and I will be working on implementing these ideas into my own practices.