C4T Summary #4

The blog that I was assigned to comment on this month is The Tempered Radical by Bill Ferriter who teaches 6th grade language arts in North Carolina. The first post I commented on was titled Are Kids really Motivated By Technology. In his post he discusses technology and its place in the 21st century classroom. I really enjoyed the blog post and he raised a great thought provoking question with the quote posted below.

With this quote he really makes you think about technology and its place in the 21st century classroom. I commented and discussed my thoughts on this quote and technology in the classroom. I went on to say throughout my time in EDM 310 we have studied this topic quite a bit. I have found, that in my opinion there should be a balance between traditional classroom style and the use of technology. These are both very useful tools and I feel that they can be utilized most effectively when used together. We as teachers must be there to guide and educate the students. Technology can be used to engage the students in some various activities. Overall I believe there are positive and negative aspects of both methods. In order to be most effective we must have a balance of the positive elements found in both. I told him that I would be commenting again on another one of his posts in the coming weeks. Then that I would be summarizing the posts as well as my comments on my class blog and provided the link.

Why I Never Recommend Teaching as a Profession is the last post that I commented on this week. In his post he discusses how legislators are making decisions just to please people and not taking in to consideration the teachers or especially the students. This is making teaching not a profession that he would recommend to anyone. Lawmakers are making it hard and not desirable even though teaching is such a rewarding profession. I found the post very insightful and sadly it is true that teaching is not a profession that is respected. He was spot on with the problem in our education system today. It should never be about test scores, but about true learning and growth in the students. The legislators’ only concern is appealing to the public and they do not truly see the harm they are doing to educators as well as the students who are the future generation. I liked and agreed with where he said that we are living in a world where legislators’ primary motivation is not to create learning environments that kids deserve but ones they think will look good and get them reelected. Until they realize the effects of their actions this will never change and education systems will not become any better. I once again told him that I had enjoyed the posts and would be summarizing them in my blog. This post was very interesting and I feel that is something we all need to be aware of as future educators. We need to work to correct the problems so that we can be the voice for our schools and students.