Blog Assignment 10

An Open Letter to Educators

In this post, Morgan Bayda shared a video made by Dan Brown. In his video he discusses how he feels schools are interfering with our educations. He points out that society is very quickly moving forward and picking up the new and improved ways of doing things, EXCEPT for our education systems. He talks about going to school and being lectured to by your teacher and then you are responsible for simply memorizing his thoughts and information. This is what Dr. Strange has talked to us about, burp-back-education. Instead of using the new technology to our advantage in classrooms, we fear it and turn it away, which in the long run, leaves us less prepared for what our future holds. Dan Brown dropped out of school because he said it was preventing him from receiving an education. Many of the "rules" about technology in schools really keeps students from learning in bigger and better ways so I could not agree more; schools do prevent us from learning sometimes. However, does this mean I think we should drop out? No.

Morgan Bayda felt the same way. While she agreed with what Dan discussed, she does not condone dropping out of school. She discussed a class that seemed like EDM310 where she was encouraged to interact and use technology.

Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home

What a story! In Mr. Johnson's post, he tells about Gertrude not wanting Tom to send pencils and paper home with his students. Tom is baffled by this and questions her as to why he shouldn't. She replies by telling him she read in a journal article that students who take pencils home have lower test scores. Tom disagrees with the research, stating that a "drill-and-kill" bubble test was the only measurement of learning used. Gertrude suggests that you cannot hold the student's accountable, when they are at home, to use the supplies for educational purposes only; instead, they may end up playing Hang Man! Tom argues back that he doesn't hold them accountable and if they end up playing Hang Man, who cares? He also makes a point that there is learning in almost everything we do, we just may not recognize it as learning.

This story had so many messages in it and my favorite was that there is learning in almost anything we do! So what if the kids decide to play Hang Man every once in a while, it's using vocabulary and they can learn from this. Instead of reading an article in a journal and then trying to take the pencils away, we need to find ways to CHANGE the results. We need to be the change that we want to see.