Week 14 - Virtual Schooling

This week we watched two YouTube videos that describe online schooling in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. Topics were discussed about the benefits of virtual schools and the critiques about them. Some of the benefits include working at one's own pace, accessibility, more independence, more free time, and a closer relationship with the instructor. This type of schooling has turned out to be very successful and useful in many cases where students are not working well with regular schools or are not able to attend them. Gaming is another tool for virtual education in which students can learn and engulf themselves in, but it would be beneficial. I would not substitute this for full time education, but for a supplement or during the summer it would help students to become familiarized with online education and enjoy it.

Virtual schooling applies to my field because it could be my field one day with teaching online to my students or even having a few who take classes online in addition to being in school. I do not plan on teaching a class online any time, but it might happen someday with the way technology is exponentially growing. It is good to be at least familiar with this type of education so that in the future I can be equipped to help students or adjust to that type of teaching if I needed to. Online education could even be a possibility for me if I decide I would like to further my education.

This map shows what kind of online education is available in the United States and it surprises me some of the states who do have access to this type of education and the ones who do not. New York, for example, has neither, yet Hawaii has both. It shows that virtual school still has a way to go in entering our school systems throughout the United States, but it is pretty widespread to say the least.

Week 7 - Visual Literacy

This week we learned about Visual Literacy in which we equate visual symbols and signs with words or ideas in our heads. For example, if we see the golden arches of McDonald's, most people probably think of fries. There are other forms of visual literacy though, such as tables, graphs, charts, maps, trees, and graphics. As humans, we have visual literacy because we have the ability to evaluate information in the form of something visual. With our Photoshop project, we use our visual literacy of one image to create a new one.

This relates to my major because most people are visual learners, which would mean that I would need to use images for my students to learn material. Whether it is through a graph or through a funny cartoon, it will usually benefit my students to use visuals. Not only will it help them learn, but it will make them more visually competent and recognize images faster, thus inhibiting faster thinking and recalling of information.

This one frame cartoon just seemed funny to me because that is not what students want, but actually quite the opposite. Although students never can articulate it or stand up and say they want more visuals in the classroom. Half of the time, they do not realize what they are missing in school. Society has put such a large emphasis on media outside of school and schools have put stress on teaching as much hard. raw facts as possible, it is only natural that children desire visual aids in the classroom.