Blog Post #6

The Networked Student- Wendy Drexler
 I thought this video was both very informative and very relatable. It adequately described to the viewers what a networked student was- a student who does not necessarily have a text book and does majority of their learning through a self-created personal learning network about whatever subject he/she is learning. As a student of this EDM 310 class, I am a networked student. We are each taught to create our own personal learning networks did facilitate our learning experiences. This situation described in the video really reminded me of USA's Hybrid classes, we see the teacher maybe once a week and the rest is left up to us to learn. We have access to USA Online in which we can network with our classmates and discuss our classwork and have regular chapter discussions. We can also each other's questions if they have any because we are able to post it online.
 The purpose of having a teacher for the networked student is very logical. Student's do not automatically know how to create these learning networks, so they need teachers to be there to guide them, tell them how to do it, advise them on how to differentiate between reliable and non-reliable sources, and to help them take advantage of all of the learning opportunities presented to them.

A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment (PLE)
 This student's personal learning environment was extremely impressive. It's so strange to see how technologically advanced a seventh grader is these days. I really liked how organized it was and how she kept  her school materials separated from her "fun" things like social networks. She really took advantage of it and was able to show us how she was able to do her science work all through the internet and tie it into one easy location. My PLN is very much still a work in progress, so it's not nearly as impressive as hers. I definitely got some good ideas for my own PLN by watching this video.

The Machine is Changing Us- Michael Wesch
 I thought this video was very interesting and his speech was very well written and delivered. One of the first things he introduced was a concept of Media Ecology. The idea behind Media Ecology is that media are environments and that media mediates our conversations and our conversations then in turn change us. We are all shaped by the media. We rely on media to tell us everything, from how to dress to how to think. One thing I found particularly interesting was his comparison between the image of his classroom and the image of the crowd at American Idol auditions. The students in the classroom were extremely disengaged and uninterested in what was going on whereas the people at the auditions showed immense enthusiasm and interest.
 Another thing I found interesting was his question of "why do these people think they deserve to be stars?" and his response to is. When people come together to create media, they do so with one person in mind- you. The viewer, the listener, the reader. Each of us is the focus of concern for media creators. This idea that we are the target of this media creates a level of narcissism. The egotistical feature of this generation comes from that idea. That is why people truly believe they deserve to be stars.
 One of the most striking quotes of the whole presentation was "we know ourselves through our relations with others." I have found this to be true with myself in many situations. Through talking about things with other people, we learn a lot about ourselves and our views on various situations.
 I thought that Mr. Wesch did a good job at delivering the ideas and opinions he had to give and keeping the audience interested. He included things like funny quotes, funny clips and shocking statistics that always grabbed your attention. Some of the statistics I enjoyed were that over 1.7 million minutes of video are uploaded to YouTube daily, 99.9% of which are irrelevant to you. I think this is a very informative video that everyone should take the time to watch!