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**Welcome to the wonderful world of Eric Wilson's Wiki!!!!**

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Greetings and salutations! My name is Eric Wilson and I am currently an MAT student at the University of Louisville. I hope to soon be teaching business education in high school. This page is being created for my EDTP 504 Teaching With Technology course.

Let me start by giving you a little background on my history with technology. I was lucking growing up to have a stepfather who was a school superintendent, giving us access to a lot of technology early on in life that otherwise would have been too expensive. I can still remember the day we got that brand new computer with a first edition Microsoft Windows. It was a step up from the DOS based system I had learned as a youngster.

I have always been an avid user of technology, saving up and buying my first personal computer that wasn't the family computer at the age of 11. Having an uncle who was an engineer and always had top of the line computers and accessories also sparked my interest. He had a 24in computer monitor in 1995. Hardly anyone had a 24in computer monitor in 1995. While other kids were outside playing, a lot of days I found myself inside, defragging my hard drive.

I started off my undergraduate career at U of L as a computer engineering major, but found that my interest in computers faded at programming and I moved to another field. My computer skills still come in handy though, as most people still call me when they have problems. I guess I will always be a "computer guy".

TED TALKS media type="youtube" key="6ILQrUrEWe8" height="390" width="640" This video shows the drastic effect that technology and connectivity have had on our daily lives. Things like magazines, hard-copy books, and newspapers will be a thing of the past. I personally read the paper every day, but I have never purchased one. It is paid for by the advertisements that I see on the individual pages. YouTube is now where I can go to see what's going on in the world. Most of the videos that are uploaded onto websites are done through YouTube and just imbedded on the individual pages. Computers that used to take up entire buildings are now weaker than my cellphone. The world is changing, and it's doing it fast. If you don't pay attention, you may have a hard time catching up.

media type="custom" key="9650318" This is not the first video from Sir Ken Robinson I have seen, and let me say that I always come away impressed. Not only does he make excellent points, but they way he is able to relay those points in an artistic, educational, and comical fashion is amazing. In this particular piece he really hits the nail on the head about how we are trying to conform children instead of letting them grow and how this is effecting them negatively. We are trying to fit everyone peg into the same hole, and if I learned anything from one of my early childhood toys, it's that the round peg goes in the round hole and the square peg goes into the square hole. We are all different and cannot be forced to be the same. I've always believed that ADHD is to an extent a myth except in certain extreme cases. I as a child would have been put on medicine immediately if doctors performed then like they do now. I was extremely hyper and drove my parents bonkers. I can only imagine how I would be as a child in today's world with all of the information overload. We have to realize that we have created this monster to an extent and medicating ourselves is not the way to fix it. We need to find different ways to educate children or else they will never reach their full potential.

media type="custom" key="9650328" When I was in elementary school, I remember one of the big things happening was that we had a computer that connect with another school in Asia. It was something that was unfathomable to us at the time. A few months ago, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was the first person to "tweet" that Osama Bin Laden was dead, soon to be followed by millions of others. I can honestly say that I knew about it because of Twitter, not because of watching the news. The world we live in now allows me to communicate with any other "connected" person in the world in a matter of seconds. I can show my dad a picture of me on Facebook one second and the next I can be killing Orcs in the World of Warcraft with my friend in Japan. There was a time when my cousin and I actually linked our computers by phone line and IP addresses just to play video games together, and now all I have to do is click a button and I'm in a virtual world with thousands of other people in real time. These are small things, but the fact is that the internet is now there for us all, and we can use it for whatever we want. Not only that, but we can use it to make a real difference, just like "Mr. Splashy Pants" did.

media type="custom" key="9650336" There was a time where someone could have a great idea, and they would die without anyone ever really knowing about it or appreciating it. Today, if you come up with something great, you can take a few seconds, upload it to YouTube, and there is the potential for MILLIONS of people to see it. That is how Johnny Lee was able to get his ideas out to the public. He also showed some ways that with a little research and ingenuity, you can save yourself a lot of money and do some amazing things in your classroom, like the whiteboard for $50.

media type="custom" key="9650354" Let me start by saying that I'm glad that Doc Brown from "Back to the Future" is still alive and has gone into teaching! The other thing that popped into my head when watching this was, "I'm sure the guys from 'The Big Bang Theory' would love this man!" This man is an absolute genius. Some people may say that he's crazy, but he'd probably say that those people are the crazy ones. I love his approach to teaching though, by getting rid of the book and doing it! He is teaching the kids the way he learned, by someone showing them how to do it and getting their hands dirty. This is the same way I feel we need to teach our students, especially with computers. Whenever someone asks me if I will do something for them on the computer, I always respond the same way: "No, but I'll show you how to do it." (my mother hates this by the way) You can learn a lot from this man and others like them if you can can get past the cooky-ness and really absorb the information.