Blog Assignment #10

An Open Letter to Educators

     This post was about a guy named Dan Brown who made a video describing how schools in general interfere with education. He talks about how the world is changing and you must change with it or you will be left behind. Education in many schools are refusing to embrace the change and are being left behind. Many classrooms still resemble the classrooms of twenty years ago. Little has changed in many schools despite the world around it changing at an astonishing rate. Dan brown has dropped out of school because he feels like it is hindering his education instead of helping it. That is sad to me. Schools should be a place where you are learning new things and things that are relevant to this ever changing new world we live in. 

     Morgan Bayda talks about this video in her blog post. She agrees with Dan Brown in many aspects that the schools in North America are falling behind the world. She talks about how she is bored in most of her classes and can hardly pay attention. She feels cheated by the University in many ways. She is not challenged to learn in most of her classes and just sits through boring lectures. One class is different however. Her Ed Computers class is much different. She is constantly collaborating with other students and other people in the world through blogging, using Twitter and many more things. This kind of learning is relevant to her and she is learning new things. 

     I enjoyed this blog post and it seems to paint a good picture of what most classrooms are like today. We must change our education system and make it more relevant to this generation of students. We can no longer sit back and use the same methods of teaching that have been around forever. I also feel like most of my classes are a waste of my money. The same information I am getting from my teachers is already available to me on the internet. Why do I need to pay someone to learn things that are already available to me online. I hope that one day as a teacher that I will be encouraging my students to learn things that are relevant to them and things that challenge them. I do not want to be known as a teacher that hinders someone's education.

Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home

     This post was about a teacher that did not want to let students take pencils home because she feared it would lower their scores on a standardized test. Another teacher thinks it will be fine and that it will be beneficial to let the students take pencils home. I think we focus on the problems too much as a society instead of a solution. Almost anything in life can be used for good or for evil. We cannot just assume that letting the students take their pencils home will have a negative impact. Creativity is something that we must never discourage from our students. If we take away tools that allow them to be creative and learn on their own, how can we expect them to be creative. We cannot assume the worst in every kid because of another situation. We must be careful as educators to not take away something from our students that might be beneficial to them and encourage learning.