This is an excellent site for teachers to be inspired by new and exciting technology ideas. The site updates continually, so you are guaranteed to be surprised at some point. click here to go to the site
Friday, August 31, 2012
website resource
One of the most interesting concepts to have arisen in the last few years is the getting together of very creative and intelligent people and having them talk to an audience about their passions and achievements. TED TALKS is an amazing website: click here to go to the site
RSS feeds
An RSS feed is a connection from your webpage to another website that continually updates its content. The updated content automatically updates on your page. Examples of this would be RSS feeds to news broadcasts, and weather channels. An RSS feed makes it easier for you to see the updates - you don't need to keep logging into that website to get the information.
Wherever you see this icon on a webpage, you know that it will have an RSS feed. Click on it and follow the directions to place the feed on your webpage.
Wherever you see this icon on a webpage, you know that it will have an RSS feed. Click on it and follow the directions to place the feed on your webpage.
some errors in the system!
Education in most schools has some major issues that must be addressed. Firstly, there is a heavy focus on competition. Competition is a useful thing as it promotes people to excel in their fields by pushing them to perform at higher levels. However, this should be the reward in itself - a greater understanding of your field and your abilities in it. Competing for the trophy is not actually necessary, and can be detrimental to further improvements and desire to continue. Children have a natural instinct to learn, and to become better at what they enjoy doing. They become motivated intrinsically (more on this later) and do not need the reward at the end to continue. In the average classroom, learning is set up to be a competition ostensibly to encourage more learning, but realistically to make students learn things they don't care about. But because there can only be one winner (or maybe a handful) in a room full of children, the overwhelming majority of students feel a sense of failure. The effects on desire to continue next time are obvious. Multiply this by the thousands of times this happens in a school year, then it is no wonder that so many children are disengaged from learning.
Secondly, there is a heavy focus on standardised testing (increasingly so through high school). In order for teachers, and more poignantly departments of education to assess what is learnt in the thousands of classrooms across the world, it is necessary to produce tests that cover the basics of each discipline. This is all fine. However, to manage the task, a one-size-fits-all approach is needed. What this means is that the individual becomes obsolete, swallowed up in the magnitude of paper and pencil, usually multiple choice testing that is not an effective measure of what has been learnt in the room. Learning becomes more about memorisation with rigid parameters rather than being driven by curiosity and interest. Students who prefer to demonstrate their knowledge in a style other than writing are incredibly disadvantaged in this process, and despite having the same understanding of a concept as the next person, do not get the recognition for it in the testing, which has many ramifications for their future. Further to this, and probably infinitely more damaging to education in general, is the present situation where standardised testing allows for comparisons to be made between students and schools, which ultimately leads to teaching becoming more about teaching to the test, rather than learning. If a student can memorise a fact, and produce it in a standardised test, then this will auger well for the school's results. However, memorising facts is not real learning, where a student deeply connects to an idea and is able to apply that understanding to other contexts. Whether you like it or not, most schools have the standardised test as a focus, as like any business, they are accountable for what they produce. Alfie Kohn says it a lot better than I:
Secondly, there is a heavy focus on standardised testing (increasingly so through high school). In order for teachers, and more poignantly departments of education to assess what is learnt in the thousands of classrooms across the world, it is necessary to produce tests that cover the basics of each discipline. This is all fine. However, to manage the task, a one-size-fits-all approach is needed. What this means is that the individual becomes obsolete, swallowed up in the magnitude of paper and pencil, usually multiple choice testing that is not an effective measure of what has been learnt in the room. Learning becomes more about memorisation with rigid parameters rather than being driven by curiosity and interest. Students who prefer to demonstrate their knowledge in a style other than writing are incredibly disadvantaged in this process, and despite having the same understanding of a concept as the next person, do not get the recognition for it in the testing, which has many ramifications for their future. Further to this, and probably infinitely more damaging to education in general, is the present situation where standardised testing allows for comparisons to be made between students and schools, which ultimately leads to teaching becoming more about teaching to the test, rather than learning. If a student can memorise a fact, and produce it in a standardised test, then this will auger well for the school's results. However, memorising facts is not real learning, where a student deeply connects to an idea and is able to apply that understanding to other contexts. Whether you like it or not, most schools have the standardised test as a focus, as like any business, they are accountable for what they produce. Alfie Kohn says it a lot better than I:
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