Thursday, March 31, 2011

Blog Post 10

Morgan Bayda: An Open Letter to Educators

I liked that Morgan Bayda posted in her blog post is welcoming to change. Bayda and the video by Dan Brown both make good points. Dan Brown is very hyped up in his video. His main point is that how educators teach is not effective anymore. He thinks that a professor with 400 students just yelling out facts is not helpful in this day. I agree. Facts are free because of the internet and why would somebody want to pay for facts when they can get them for free? However, in society today a college degree is important. To change the necessity of a degree is practically impossible. Therefore, we should change the way educators teach which would then make an education even more valuable. I feel as though EDM 310 would be a good example of a type of class that Dan Brown would approve of because we're learning so much more than just facts! Actually, our learning isn't even based on facts. It's based on becoming a better learner so we can be better teachers. In conclusion, Dan Brown, Morgan Bayda, and anyone who wants to enjoy learning would both appreciate a class that requires them to be engaged in their learning rather than a lecture hall where they fight sleeping.

Don't Let Them Take The Pencils Home-
Ha Ha! This was interestingly humorous. A teacher was confronted by an administrator because he let his students take pencils home. (Maybe I am very fortunate but I still don't understand why the students wouldn't be allowed pencils to begin with...???) Anyway, the administrator spit out a statistic which said that students who use pencils at home have lower test scores. The teacher then explained to her that the statistic is a little bogus and better yet he explained some solutions to the problem. He finds homework projects which will keep his students interested so they will want to do them instead of playing games with their pencils. I think that his solutions will prove beneficial.
PS- Is this a metaphor I'm just not grasping or are students really not allowed pencils?

flower made of pencil points

1 comment:

  1. Jacey-Blaire,

    You are absolutely right about EDM, and I wish all classes were designed this way. Students need to learn and need to know how to learn. Simply preaching facts is not effective, and the students are not learning from this. We do need to change the way we reach our students to further change the education system. By the way, I like your picture. :)

    From Dr. Strange: It seems that you did not understand that Tom Johnspn's post Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home was a metaphor in which pencils were computers. I will complete my post Metaphors: What They Are and Why We Use Them (A Learning Opportunity) later this week. After this post appears on the Class Blog you will be required to leave a comment. Watch the Class Blog for further instructions.

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