Online Learning

I read the second article linked on Mr. Mayo's blog entitled "A World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others." It opened with an example of a middle school girl who has a blog about her community service projects with readers from around the world. It goes on to discuss how tool s like blogs, and wikis could change the ways kids learn for the better. The author discusses how teachers in schools could become the middlemen and women between kids and experts online, instead of teachers serving as the primary experts for their students. Of course, the author also shares anxiety about online predators among other drawbacks to online learning.

According to the author, Will Richardson, "Experts are at our fingertips, through our keyboards or cell phones, if we know how to find and connect to them." This summarizes Richardson's main point, that that legions of knowledgeable people can be found through the internet. Maybe so, but for every one true expert there must be uncounted numbers of people who put things out on blogs or wikis without knowing what they are talking about, or even worse, whop will fake credentials to seem credible. I think this is very pertinent to our filmmaking class, because this kind of learning is exactly what Mr. Mayo is encouraging us to do, however, his version of this is relatively enclosed. It's pretty clear that the only people reading these blogs are other CAP students, so we benefit from interdependence by using these blogs, but we are not going out into the unknown of the worldwide web as the article suggests would be the new path for learning. I am interested in learning more about how government works and how it pertains today.

On an unrelated topic, there's a relatively new band out of Montgomery, Alabama called The Alabama Shakes. You might've heard the single "Hold On" on the radio, that's them, and they're quite good and play roots rock type music. You should listen to them if you like Creedence Clearwater Revival or some of the Blakc Keys early music.

Isaiah's Song Lyric: "It's better to burn out than to fade away." -Neil Young "My My, Hey Hey"

From his album Rust Never Sleeps which is essential Neil Young. The above line might be an advisable course for punk rockers, but not for regular people (if you know who the song is about you probably got that).