Ed's Fill of Phil

I finally, after only 4 years, completed my philosophy of education video project. I found myself facing 2 main obstacles as i attempted this project.

You can access the video via the following link: http://youtu.be/1kEg-CQHA2U
1. I found it excruciatingly extremely difficult to shorten and rewrite my philosophy of education. I still read my own philosophy of education-the written version-and think, "How in the world did I write this?" Certainly, the original still doesn't contain everything as a living document, but it comes pretty darn close.

2. I found it difficult to motivate myself to go into the "UNKNOWN". I think that I find it particularly difficult to work on something related to technology when I have had such a disdain for it all my life. Sometimes I think that technology takes the fun and learning out of learning. But I realize that at other times it actually facilitates learning. This seems to be the key to using technology in the classroom-discerning technology's usefulness.


In terms of the process putting the media piece together, I ran into a problem when I had to find MovieMaker on the internet. It was quite challenging and my friend actually had to find it for me to download the program. Then, I posted the pictures and they all turned to red X's. So I let Jason Ohler, my instructor, know what was happening and he immediately told me the solution. Moreover, it worked! Otherwise, the project went pretty smoothly-As smooth as butter.

Reflection

I found this assignment rather helpful in clarifying my philosophy of education in the sense that it made me think about my philosophy time and time again. Whenever I discussed education with others, I'd ask questions relating to their philosophy and I'd try to remember my thoughts and responses to write down for my own philosophy of education. However, I believe that in a short assignment like this, I couldn't really hit my exhaustive philosophy of education. But that's ok because I don't think that a potential employer would like to hear that necessarily.

Verdict: Great assignment and very helpful

Uses

A project like this could be very useful from time to time in the classroom. I think it's a motivational tool for students to do some creative things in terms of explaining or describing things that they are learning. For example, a project could be: be as wacky as you want in teaching me how to solve an equation. Or, when I was in high school, we showed a vignette illustrating one of the Bill of Rights. It appears that our imagination is the limits on the uses of a project like this.

Cheerios,
LT