Posterous

Jazzper™

Teachers are educating the future but still not leading into the future

One could describe a teacher as a leader and mentor. A teacher is someone who has knowledge and a wish (hopefully) to share it. I am one of them and I am proud of being one of them. Especially after this evening's TeachMeet conference in Stockholm where 60 or so teachers met up to discuss e-learning and technology in education. A number of great presentations and speeches were held and I left the conference half an hour before the end, quite satisfied and inspired. It is strengthening to spend some time among like-minded, people who believes in technology as a great teaching tool and aid. This is the way it should be.

I am asking myself though if this wish to work more with IT and technology can be applied to a certain kind of teachers. Earlier today I listened to a couple of presentations organized by Dreamhack and the audience were all men, mostly young men like myself. The teachers attending the conference were mostly men as well, which is quite interesting since teaching by tradition is a women's profession. Does this mean we could narrow it all down and state that teachers who want to use technology and IT in the classroom are mostly men? Well, the majority are men but there are also quite few female teachers who are or want to us IT more than they do at the moment, which is great. Also, it seems to be a question of generations. Younger teacher are much more familiarized with technology and obviously more eager to use it compared to older generations. 

However, I sense there is a problem in the Swedish schools today and it's not about generations or gender - it's about seeing the value and possibilities and for doing that, it doesn't matter what teacher you are. It would help, though, if you are not afraid of trying new things and willing to spend some time to learn. Apart from that it only takes a bit of effort and a positive attitude, but unfortunately this is where it all fails. Most teachers I have met aren't willing to sacrifice this extra time and energy they think (sic!) they need in order to start teaching with the help of technology and this is by all means sad. To me it's unbelievable that a school that educates people for the future simply lacks the motivation to also be the future and lead the way into the future. In a way teachers today are using the same old methods and pedagogy that was used hundreds of years ago and from what I have come to understand, it is not working as well as it should. Our unwillingness to find and use alternative ways of teaching affects our students negatively - we can't teach students born in the 20th and 21st century while the school and educational system haven't developed their activities since the 19th century! 

Ultimately teachers are educating those who will inherit and govern the world in only a few years time. Today technology is such a great part of our daily lives that it can't be ignored forever. Students need to turn elsewhere in order to learn more about these things since school ever so often fail to provide them with the right knowledge. This is not the way to do it and it should be the other way round. Our job is to educate and prepare for a life in the future and we should do whatever we can do also join our students into the future, and also lead the way. In order to succeed doing this we all need to read up, exploring, using, discovering and educate ourselves. It's each and every school's obligation to see that it happens.

It's time to move on. The time of chalkboards are over. Way over. 

((tag: Teaching, Education, Technology))
Filed under: E-learning Education Teaching Technology

Setting up Homegroup in Windows 7

I am not sure how many hours I have spent trying to connect my two computers to the same homegroup, but I finally managed to do it. Problem is I don't think I can explain how I did it since it could have been many actions on the way that finally made it work.

However the problem I faced at first was the fact that my two PCs used different Windows 7 RC versions and my desktop PC is wired through a broadband router whilst my laptop (Acer Aspire One) unwired via wifi. I tried to google if it was even possible to connect them despite the different OS versions and connections, without any luck.

My laptop did find the homegroup set up on my desktop, but windows wouldn't allow me to connect to it. I had a custom password but as soon as I changed it to the system generated password, my laptop suddenly connected. Joy! If this little change was the only thing to make it work, I don't know, or if it was the number of reboots, changing names, resets of network adapters or disablings of 3rd party firewalls, I can't say. But the firewalls could have been an issue. My desktop runs with a beta version of Kaspersky and my laptop Comodo. Earlier I disabled both firewalls and enabled the Windows one instead.

But at the end of the day, the one thing I did was to go with the system password and it all worked. Perhaps luch or perhaps, as simple as that.

 

 

Filed under: Computers Technology Windows 7

In China they pay by the hour
Its actually a much better way to pay by the hour. The Chinese pay the equivalent of 6 cents an hour to play.
via rockpapershotgun.com

Reading on a forum that MMOs are in China payed by the hour instead of monthly. Don't know whether that applies to everyone though. 6 cents an hour for a casual player must be a much better deal than the monthly $15.

Filed under: Gaming Technology Web

H1N1

H1N1 - a new mobile phone? Sounds like it, to me...or perhaps we should just call it "Swinephone".

Filed under: Technology
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