As a future educator, Michael Wesch's TED talk about the responsibly of teachers to move students from being knowledgeable to knowledge-able made me reflect on what type students I want walking out the door after they take my class. Wesch points out that "there is something in the air", literally. Knowledge is ubiquitous and gone are the days where we teach our students to memorize information just to spit it back out on a multiple choice test. If the goal is to engage our students to promote learning, then we need to make them feel like they are learning something that is relevant to their life, and I'm not talking about tying every lesson to Taylor Swift. I am talking about teaching kids to take raw information, form opinions or create something new. Wesch says that we need to push students to move PAST critical thinking. He talks about the media not being a one way street anymore. The public now has a voice, so the kid that walks away from my mathematics class is one that can sift through all that information out there and create something meaningful and novel from it. As a teacher, I hope to strive to ask good questions, ones that Wesch say leads students on a quest. I hope to cultivate a learning environment where students don't ask "Is this going to be on the test?" or "Is this answer right?", but questions that show there are connecting with mathematics and that they are thinking hard in my class.
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May 2015
AuthorJanine Renner - life long learner Categories
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