Yesterday evening (March 11, 2009) I attended Thomas Frey’s Webinar on the future of education titled, Radical Shifts are About to Begin. Similar to his 2007 article, “The Future of Education” Thomas opened his presentation summarizing his thoughts on problems which hold countries back and then hit a few points found within his article. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I was hoping Frey would go more in depth into his ideas. The entire presentation came across as a freshman level course instead of a post-graduate thesis. As I was saying perhaps my expectations were too high. Additionally, the presentation was presented using the Elluminate Live environment, which had includes a white board and chat window among other features. While the chat area had numerous side conversations going on pertaining to the presentation, the whiteboard area was not used (except for at the beginning of the presentation where the host asked everyone to ping their location on a map). Frey discussed using technology in education, while at the same time he chose not to use the technology available for his presentation. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but why use an interactive environment for your presentation without using the environment itself!? Especially a the topic titled “The Future of Education.” Granted Frey explained that he is an outsider to the educational system, but still I don’t think that is explanation is enough. Please don’t get me wrong, Frey’s presentation was good and his article is even better; I was just expecting more.

There are very few computer programs or educational media set up to really work with students and teachers in the elementary classroom.  There are plenty of educational resources available, but very few that actually are there to help teachers use technology to teach students.  Although it is unreasonable to assume every school has access to computers, it is common now that every elementary classroom has its own computer.

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Currently there are two main educational sites used in the college arena: Blackboard and Livetext.  I have used both several times in the past, and am currently using both in different Eastern Michigan courses.  Personally, I cannot stand either of them.  Livetext is a nightmare to submit any project or paper on, and Blackboard hardly works the majority of the time.  It is extremely difficult to communicate with professors through both sites, and every professor I have had just uses email instead of communicating with students through the website.  Livetext provides the tools to edit writing, such as font and size, but Blackboard does not; however, Blackboard is easier to use, while Livetext makes building a house with no tools look easy.

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