Week 1 – Blog Posting #2 – Learning 2.0

Ken Robinson’s talk about Education and Creativity is right on target. Everyone that has any influence on the education of students should be required to watch it. Students are molded and shaped to fit teachers’ expectations year after year. As students get older, teachers expect them to be able to create, design, write and interpret and then wonder why they cannot.

How much more would our students learn if they could make choices based on their interests? If a student wanted to learn a foreign language that was not offered at his school, why don’t we allow him to learn online? Sometimes there is a small window or opportunity for learning and if we do not allow a student to pursue that interest, the desire to learn may be gone forever.

Not all students develop at the same rate. Some students are more mature and are ready to learn beyond what is offered. Yet he is required to sit through lessons he already mastered. Why is he not encouraged to study lessons that challenge him? Why do so many of our students drop out of school before they graduate?

Students who do not receive guidance at home should have the opportunity to talk to someone at school about planning for his future. When a student is not happy with the education he is receiving, he should be able to choose a different program, setting, or method.

I also agree with Yong Zhao’s position on American education. We do have some problems in public education and the problems need to be fixed. We need to stop the insane amount of testing. We need to teach students to love math, reading, and writing again.

Engaging students in learning is a challenge every teacher faces daily. Tristan de Frondeville coaches teachers on how to use project learning in their classrooms. He offers a list of Ten Steps to Better Engagement at http://www.edutopia.org/print/6124.

How do teachers assess student learning while using the Web 2.0 tools? In a article by Bobby Elliiott at http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/d/de/Assessment_2_v2.pdf he provides a list of characteristics for assessing Web 2.0 learning.

Students will learn about the web whether we teach them or not. When they finally understand what is there and know that we did not provide them with an adequate education, how will they feel?