Blog Post 6

1. When I pulled Wendy Drexler's video "The Network Student" up to watch it, I honestly had no idea at all as to what to expect. As I watched it the fist time, I could only think how it related to EDM310. Then I realized it is EDM310, but only a different subject. At first I as not all about courses set up such as EDM310 but I knew I had to do it. Now a few weeks in, I believe it is a great learning process that should be a standard for all teachers not just South Alabama students. These course are a great way of learning about resources and how to find them rather than reading a chapter and being tested on it. These courses teach skills and knowledge rather than memorization and reading a textbooks, which makes it all the more interesting.
The first thing I realized is that this is a high school not college student. I could not imagine doing a class like this in high school. I would not start such a heavy course in high school, I would have to wait until college. Comparing this course to EDM310 again, I think it is to much to ask for from a high school student when the student has many other classes and other activities they are a part of. This class only meet three days out of the five, what about the other two days? It is high school, legally students have to be at school five days a week.
As I watched the video a second time I was thinking of the question "Why does the networked student even need a teacher?". The teacher is necessary to be a learning tool between the student and the online resources. For the first couple of weeks students will be learning how to operate the networking systems and since it will be new to the students, they will need help on navigating through the site. In conclusion, the teacher is there for guidance and a communication as well as a resource tool. She is teaching him skills rather than useless information he will not remember in two years.

2. After watching A 7th Grader's Personal Learning Environment I found that everyone does things differently. The student in the video was very organized with her bookmarking and keeping things on track. I personally use my history and a bookmarking bar to keep track of items/ links. I also like Google Drive to save documents so that you are able to view them from any computer with internet. Dropbox is also a useful site to store files so that they are viewable from any internet server.