Bikerdude

G-Dawg is enrolled in the fifth year intensive program here at UVM. He graduated in 1993 with a degree in secondary education. He then taught at the middle school level in the Northeast Kingdom. It didn't take him long to find out he didn't want to teach middle school or live in the NE Kingdom, so he returned to Burlington where he became an AmeriCorps*VISTA member. He worked in the special education department and ran the afterschool program at the H.O. Wheeler School. G-Dawg found he liked working with younger students. After four years at H. O. Wheeler, he started to feel a bit burned out with the challenges he was facing and decided to return to school to get certified.

G-Dawg likes to read comic books. Some of his favorites are Batman and Punisher. He likes to Kayak, bike and occasionally ride a motorcycle.

G-Dawg's passion in teaching is helping children go through the process of learning, seeing determination pay off with success. For an example he used snowboarding with the Chill program this past winter. Watching kids master this sport was very exciting for him. He likes working at the elementary school level because he finds that students are more willing to make mistakes.

G-Dawg would like to learn about designing an exciting curriculum using the technology he will be learning about in this course. Two types of learning he is interested in is placed based and service learning.

His favorite web sites are those dealing with filmography, and he also enjoys checking his email.

Interesting websites: [|Greenschool] [|FoodWorks] [|Virtual Mentors] [|Placed Based Learning] [|Project Based Learning] [|Linking Students via Web] [|World Links] Clothes in a virtual age: http://dt.parsons.edu/dtw_10.html Technology and children: http://www.cio.com/archive/092203/elkind.html Fool's Gold: [|http://www.stanford.edu/%7Egranados/ED342x/fools_gold_slides_files/frame.htm] Technology and child development: http://faculty.washington.edu/pbell/kidtech/ Position paper: http://www.naeyc.org/about/positions/pdf/PSTECH98.PDF Future of Children: http://www.futureofchildren.org/pubs-info2825/pubs-info_show.htm?doc_id=69787 KFF report: http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/The-Effects-of-Electronic-Media-on-Children-Ages-Zero-to-Six-A-History-of-Research-Issue-Brief.pdf Empathy: http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/7/cu13.html Zero-3: http://www.zerotothree.org/vol22-2a.pdf Brain Page: http://www.brainconnection.com/content/175_4 Study of technology: http://www.childwellbeing.org/c-pdfs/MD_TechPapersII.pdf Patience is a virtue: http://www.campaignforamericaskids.org/3B_dot_kids.html Allianace for Children: http://www.allianceforchildhood.net/projects/computers/computers_reports_fools_gold_download.htm Nature Deficit Disorder: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4663852

Summary of conversation with Charlie: 1. **Idea of Community**: Initially talked about the students relationship with the various levels of community. Starting in the classroom community and then moving outward to the school community, the community where the parents reside and beyond students are members of an increasing number of communities. The focus for me here was how do we use technology to help connect students with these various levels of community. 2. **Emotion:** In talking about technology and the dissconnect that it can create we Charlie started talking about the emotioanl response that come from face to face contact. He connected it to the memory map on the wall by saying there is something happening neurologically when we are in conversation. We had been talking about how through text messaging and IM, or e-mail people are removed from face to face contact and thus lack the emotional responses that come from personal interaction. That disconnect is a very real physiological response, hard wired in our brains. I [|wrote about it] on Saturday morning in the context of our conversation. 3. **Imagination**: I suggested a fear that children are loosing the ability to use their imaginations as material is just given to them through technology (PS2, TV). This connects to the emotional dissconect that can come through technology, if we are only passive recipiets of the information. 4. **Empathy**: From this we started talking about the challenges to developing empathy in a digital age. If empathy necessitates the ability to relate to others how can that be done if we are not connected on an emotional level? I mentioned ND a 5th grade teacher who does a unit on the holocaust. 5. **Digital Disconnect**: This lead to my new big idea: The disconnect that is being created by being connected digitally not face to face. 6. **Key Ideas**: visual images can generate an emotional response, develpment of empathy in a digital age, establishing empathy in a modecon world, technolgy vs. group work

Bikerdude, Check out a book by Todd Oppenheimer called, "The Flickering Mind". It is about the negative influence the computer age is having on kids today. Ima

Here' a link to a bit about myspace.com - http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2006/07/001525.php pb

Bikerdude. Here are those two sites I mentioned that connected the sensation of emotion to the processing of emotion. [|How the brain gives special resonance to emotions]. and [|The brain's remembrance of emotional events].