Movie Response (Prompt 5)

One of the things that really stuck out to me in the video we watched in discussion was when the narrator was talking about a supposed debate on whether or not high schools across the nation should be equipped with computers.

I think it's kind of funny (or ironic?), because this video must be slightly outdated. In my experience growing up in my school district (Kimberly, Wisconsin) and in in every district I've ever been to, computers and internet are used heavily in class. Even in elementary school, I remember going to the computer lab, equipped with Macs, to learn how to do research projects. In High School, we'd often go to the lab for an entire class (often 3-4 days in a row), just to "research" our topics for projects or papers.

What I'm trying to say is that in my own experience, it's not a debate as to whether or not schools across the nation have decided to adapt computers/internet as part of the learning and teaching method.

My school was also a leader in this state with incorporating technology into the classroom. My senior year, I took a class that was strictly for video and movie making. We learned to film movies, edit them, and mix audio. There were no tests or quizzes, just 90 minutes of movie making every day. We used Adobe Premiere (the same program that the children used in the video to animate their clay animals)

Also, we were offered a large selection of computer science courses. These differed courses differed greatly. A student could take a class devoted to animation and Flash, web page creation with Dreamweaver, or program scripting.

I noticed that the things I saw at New Tech High in Napa were things that I think my high school was definitely capable of teaching. I'm guessing that the video we saw was created in the late 90's (1998 maybe), so that just goes to show you how quickly technology changes. In the video there was a quote that said something like "the tools that these kids learn to use will be outdated in 6-7 months, so they have to keep learning".

I'm sure now, New Tech High has much greater technology and teaching capabilities with its students.