I chose to revisit the blog, The Innovative Educator: sharing ideas about educating innovatively. The most recent blog is titled, “Facebook Doesn’t Get Teachers Fired- Inappropriate Behavior Does.” The blog posted information from a New York Post article on teachers getting fired for flirting with students on facebook. I was shocked to read this was true. To think these teachers, and those in defense of such ridiculous behavior, suggest it’s the fault of Facebook and any other digital device of todays world. I happen to strongly disagree with that and rather agree with the blogger in that it is not the fault of having Facebook, but instead the fault falls in the hands of these teachers themselves and their inappropriate behavior. Ofcourse now, as the blogger suggests, this is going to further instill fear in adult's minds over whether their child/student is safe to use such tools. The blogger also notes that this is NOT a social networking scandal, but rather “an inappropriate conduct scandal.” The blogger goes on to say that “These teachers weren’t behaving badly because of facebook. There have always been inappropriately behaving adults. Facebook, in the case or these adults, didn’t cause their behavior, it just made it easier for them to get caught.” I have to say, I completely agree with this statement.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Inquiry-Based Learning and Historical Thinking
Throughout my educational experience as a student, I cannot recall being taught a lesson solely providing an inquiry-based learning style. My educational background has been very traditional, memorizing facts and having to recall information given to us. In a typical lesson, my teachers would tell us about what we will be learning, provide an example and show us how to do it. We would then memorize what we’ve seen, try to comprehend the meaning behind it and try to tackle it on our own. There would be discussions on how it can be applied elsewhere and whether or not it could relate to us or life in the future. Definitely in subjects such as science we were given even greater freedom to learn, hands-on, how something develops or can be made using various materials. Hypothesis were sometimes created and we discovered IF…THEN, cause and effect solutions and outcomes.
As an Assistant Teacher for the past two years, both in kindergarten and third grade, I also experienced a pretty traditional method of teaching. As some fellow teachers remarked on the lessons prepared for our students, “we are here to hold their hand through the process” in these early years of learning. In other words, we provide them with information and try to have them comprehend and apply it to the best of their ability. If our first attempt fails to any student, we then dig deeper and help them understand using various learning style techniques. There were various projects, especially in science and social studies, where our students were given materials and asked to tackle the activity with little instruction and see what they can figure out themselves. Of course in the end, we would still provide the ‘correct’ way to accomplish the desired outcome and why what happened, did in fact happen, therefore again we are teaching a traditional method.
I believe the idea and usage or inquiry-based learning can be very valuable to both the teacher and the student. Although I agree with many forms or traditional ways of teaching/learning, I also deem it important to use multiple hands-on, effective learning strategies. A quote given in our inquiry-based learning guide struck me as being significant to the educational world, “Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand.” The last part of this quote where it states, “ …involve me and I understand”, is what I see as the part lacking in traditional methods of teaching. As far as historical thinking in classrooms goes, I also consider it to be essential that students learn all different interpretations of historical facts and situations. So often in traditional taught education, students are only given one (sometimes two) textbooks with all presumed ‘facts’ of how historical events occurred. The problem I agree with on this is that students are only given one perspective and point of view (usually biased by the author). I think it would be more valuable to students if they were provided with more than one textbook, and made to research the topic(s) further throughout the internet and other various historical documents in libraries, attend museums, etc.
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