Is it Really the Teacher's Fault?

The assignment for March 28th of 2010 was to write an essay in regards to the post by Morgan Bayda. Here is said essay:



The blog post "An Open letter to Educators" by Morgan Bayda was enlightening as to how education should be like today, and how students of America are being cheated out of an education. I agree with the author in some ways, however, in some I do not.

The author begins the post with an introduction to a video by Dan Brown---a student that recently dropped out of the University of Nebraska because "His schooling was interfering with his education"---meaning I guess he didn't agree with how he was being educated. The video was smart and he raised many good points, especially the last one: "...the world is changing and if you don't change with it, the world will decide it doesn't need you anymore. Validating the whole point of teaching this class.

The author then states how she agrees with Brown: she believes that she too was cheated out of a valuable education, and that the institutionalized education that she received was obviously boring and not relevant to her interests. Both Brown and Bayda agree that teachers are afraid of change and this is why nothing has been done about it. This is where I disagree with the post.

As a future educator, I have to take many education courses, one of which is telling me that I have a state regulated curriculum that I will have to teach my kids. And if we do not obey what the state says schools could lose funding. Secondly, after observing for most of the semester in an actual school I've come to realize that the teachers are not afraid of using the technology that is in front of them, but do not have access to them...funding for schools are not exactly great, especially in this day and age. Thirdly, we as a country are broke, and this form education is not cheap.

So to conclude, Brown and Bayda raised valid points. The post was intriguing. But I do not believe that we should blame the teachers for this. In my honest opinion, they are just trying to what they are told and do it with the best means that they have. You should blame the government for this...not the teachers.

Networking Students

I found this video to be very intriguing. It wasn't very long, and kept my intention and got to the point.

This video is based on the premise of Connectivism. Connectivis is a teaching method where the teacher uses networking as a way for students to learn---or better known as independent learners. The hypothetical student in high school attends school 3 days a week and uses tools such as: Delicious, blogs, twitter, podcasts etc. to understand his subject (the American Psyche.)

The point of the video was to show its audience that curriculums are becoming more and more like connectivism. And that the 21st century student needs the classroom aspect (having a teacher) and needs to be on their own.

The Future...

The assignment on February 28th of 2010 was to watch these two videos about writing with multi-media. The videos were presentations from an english professor at Rutgers University by Dr. Richard E. Miller. In my honest opinion I found the videos to be very interesting.


The two videos were a result of an epiphany that Mr. Miller kindly shared with the rest of the world. His epiphany was simple and to the point, technology is the future, and we have to adapt...this means writing with multi-media. In his first movie, he states how there are so many books out there, and now we can get them online and I believe the price he mentioned was 59 cents on the internet.

So to conclude, technology is the future. It is booming at an alarming rate, and that we should be literate if we want to teach...this theory adopted by Dr. Strange seems to be true. And yes, my future students will be literate as well in the this technological world and I will do my best as a teacher, to make them equipt with the tools they need to be successful, when this future gets here...I doubt it will be any time soon.

Honesty Required?

I'm not exactly sure if we're supposed to blog about this topic, however, since Dr. Strange has decided to throw students underneath a bus for not doing their assignments...I think it's better to be safe than sorry...

Let me explain the blog post to all of you actually reading this and paying attention: the blog post consisted of a student who lied about their reflection...and we were asked as fellow students to judge him or her with the following questions: 1. Does ZZZ think I am asking for information about how much work ZZZ has done? No. I already have that. All of it. And most of those data I get automatically. I want ZZZ to think about what ZZZ is or is not doing!
2. Does ZZZ really think that ZZZ has done all of the work that I cannot find or see?
3. Is this an attempt to hustle me?
4. If ZZZ is so inaccurate with ZZZ's own evaluation, what will ZZZ's evaluations of ZZZ's students be like?
5. Would you like to have ZZZ as a colleague?
6. Would I want my children or grandchildren to be in ZZZ's class?
7. Would you want your children or grandchildren to be in ZZZ's class?
Click here to see the comments and actual blog, so that you can come to the right conclusion on your own.

Now...before I say anything that can further jeopardize my academic carrer (because I too am behind on my blog) let me leave you with questions: Is this right of Dr. Strange? Is this what we're supposed to do to our students when they do something like wrong like this? Does he actually care and has tried to help out classmate ZZZ?