It was interesting taking a look at the annotated resources list and it really just shows the vast amount of information that the internet makes available. Seemingly any piece of data or statistic that one could ever need is available somewhere. And the accessibility of this information is the best part. Most of this information was only available to a select few in the government or with the influence to access it. The United States government has done a great job opening all of this up for the general public and the transperancy it creates is liberating.
Although not entirely applicable to this class inparticular when I saw this video it truly led me to buy in to the power of Web 2.0. Watch if you haven't had a chance to see Kony 2012:
The way information is created and distributed truly is undergoing a fundamental change with the world wide web and I cannot think of a better example than this.
Quite a week for me personally in this class. Jessica, James, and me had a very tough time figuring out the Guided Practice assignment so I did some "old fashioned" note-taking with a pen and paper while re-listening to the recording of the class and we got it figured out. I do appreciate the assignment offering practical scenarios as one of the big problems I had with mathematics growing up was that the teachers I had rarely integrated practical uses of what I was learning. This definitely goes hand-in-hand with the idea of authentic learning. I am a history teacher and sometimes it can be difficult to make the content extremely relevant and authentic to the kids but exercises like the guided practice make me realize how important it is to constantly do that.
Watching the Bill Tancer video scared me a bit. Although he is obviously a brilliant man the whole idea of data collection and the potential risks of companies keeping digital footprints in some sort of database makes me nervous and wonders what it could do to our privacy. I hope the day never comes when using a computer for a lot of different tasks (which I currently do) makes it okay for my online activities to be registered and monitored.
