Technology, Education, and Web 2.0

I’m a 38-year old husband, father, and full-time college student majoring in Internet Marketing at an online university. You probably are wondering why I’m on an educational blogging platform? Well, this is just one of many blogs that I author. I have my personal blog at TechChris.com, the first version of this blog, and I also write occasionally for Dadomatic.com.

I started this particular blog to discuss not so much what I was learning at Full Sail, but more importantly how I was learning it. The problem was that the program at Full Sail didn’t seem all that revolutionary to me. We were doing online webinars with the teacher, reading blogs and web articles for class assignments, doing research on Google, and using content from all over the web not just stuff produced internally at Full Sail. I thought, what is so revolutionary about this I’ve been doing all this on my own for years. Then I realized something, in the educational system in America this is all considered cutting edge! [Read more →]

When I was in school this is exactly what I would have loved as a student. I want an opportunity to teach students like this. I believe this environment is more beneficial and more effective than a classroom could ever be.

It certainly is not right for every student but I think this is the epitome of project-based learning. Apple is exploring the Classroom of Tomorrow, Today and I think they need to look no further than here.

Let me say that I am not a teacher. I’m a parent and a full-time college student majoring in Internet Marketing. I attend a university that has a physical campus but I have never seen it with my own eyes. I attend all of my classes online. My classes are not lectures recorded in a classroom and then put on the web for the online students. We have specially recorded content that is much shorter and designed for people who may not want or need an hour long lecture. Our assignments are project based and require us to go online and find resources to solve them. Next month we are going to go completely paperless and our books will be e-books. My school has completely rethought what it means to be a student and how to teach. They learned from the students, watched how they learn, and asked them what they needed. [Read more →]

I’m sure if you have been watching YouTube any length of time you have seen lip-dub videos. Many of them are made in the editing and this one is no exception. But watch closely. This was filmed in ONE LONG SHOT. The preparation must have been immense. Think about how hard, and expensive, this would have been if you had to use film. The tech tools we have available to us today put projects like this in reach of almost anyone. [Read more →]