C4T #2 post #1 and C4K Summary

SHOULD WE DISCARD THE NOTION OF THE CLASSROOM? - The Tempered Radical By Bill Ferriter This blog post challenges the normal classroom setting. Bill first goes into comparing engagement and empowerment. To be simplified, he classifies engagement as a buy-in and then he classifies empowerment as ownership. The statistics from this post were baffling. It was appalling to see the amount of people who found standardized testing to be ineffective and even harmful. 77 percent of people had that notion. 60 percent of people did not agree with the notion that a teacher's score is their students' score. That basically means that one cannot blame a teacher for the failures or the low test scores of their students. This somewhat has to do with the drive of the students and the socioeconomic status, and the societal notion of education, and cannot be solely blamed on the teaching received. Bill also goes into talent and hard-work, and how the talent of an individual means nothing if it is not used correctly. A big topic in this post was technology and education. He stated that "technology is not a learning outcome, but a tool." teachers are spending so much teaching students how to use technology, but not teaching them how to utilize to the best potential while further enabling the society around themselves. Even with all this technology available, it is not being of the best help that it can be, due to the box that it has been placed into in our society. This post seemed to place a lot of responsibilities on the shoulder of the educators. It argued that good teaching can help to fix "bullying, foul language, and wasted time," to mention a few. The educators, according to this post, spend even out of their personal funds, at least $100, for supplies in their classrooms. This shows that teachers want things done, and some are willing to send out of pocket to make it happen. A very good point that was brought up, was when Bill brought a new thing to light of understanding the learning outcome. Many slide shows and textbooks incorporate that in now, because at the end of it all, the goal and outcome may still be unclear. Bill suggests building a bridge between the old and new in order to carry this generation of technology to greater heights.

Bill talked about the standard for education and teaching, so I challenged that notion a little bit. To say that standardized testing has gotten a lot, is one thing. But to say that it is not needed, is another thing altogether. In my opinion having a standard is very important. There no way to measure progress without a yardstick. Of course thinking outside the box and going against the norm is important for us as the society to see things in a different light, but there will always be those people out there. There has to be a baseline in order for students to reach that empowerment that Bill Ferriter is referring to.

C4K Summary In the poem Kylie teacher assigned them assignments on to pick a color.
The children had to write a poem about a color of there choice.
The teacher informed them to give details on the color.
Kylie also had to give a visual picture of the color.
Kylie had to really pick a color of interest.

I inferred that it was engaging to assign kids a color to choose from.
Colors can be very essential to a humans eyesight.
I gave Kylie an example of the color I would have used.
I really gave important detail about the color.