BP6_2009121_Anti_Teaching

BP6_2009121_Chew_Carolyn_Anti_Teaching

As stated by Michael Wesch students find problems with the significance of the material being taught or tested in our schools. I disagree about what students find significant because sometimes students can’t judge what’s significant for insufficient information. In other words schools are designed to teach skills needed to develop functional citizens in today’s society along with the corporate worlds needs. Most of the skills learned in schools may not reveal value until later in life. However the instructional delivery methods in which our schools operate, needs a serious overhaul. Students are not motivated to learn nor are they retaining what is taught.

I agree that education has become a relatively meaningless game of grades rather than an important and meaningful exploration of the world (Wesch 2008). The fear of students failing the State Standards test has been our measuring device for a school. Test often measure little more than how well they can recite what they have been told (Wesch 2008). Little has been gained so far as teaching students how to learn. Too often students have come in my class and said, “come on Ms. Chew lets hurry up and take this test before I forget everything I studied”. This is cause for alarm! The student is really saying to me that the material studied has no significance to them other than passing the test. The most challenging thing I’ve found about teaching is motivating students to take an interest in learning. Wesch mentioned getting students to ask good questions, but the only way for that to occur is for learning and understanding to take place.

Today’s students have established their own personal learning environments to connect with friends and events of interest to them. Learning is taking place. What it seems that we are trying to do with PLI is figure out how to take this same interest students have in their on environments and make learning simple.

I enjoy using the course management system set up by Full Sail Univeristy, (continually being tweaked). Something like this could work well in our middle and secondary schools, to allow more creativity in students and ease the tension for teachers. Students would easily be able to tract their progress.

Technology alone is not enough, schools need a mixture of instructional design strategies, web 2.0 tools and instructional designed lessons that will reach all learning styles and multiple intelligence. It is necessary that schools incorporate brain based learning and multiple intelligence concepts. These are not all things that will cost money, some simple things can be added such as: playing different kinds of music while students work, experimenting to see which "works best", change the furniture sometimes, allow students to move around to stimulate left and right brain learning, as well as writing and research assignments, add flowers and pictures to the room. Brain-based learning has been called a combination of brain science and common sense. (Hart1983) called the brain "the organ of learning." He advocated learning more about the brain in order to design effective learning environments (Caine1991).


The key components in the 21st century schools should be based on brain based learning and better instructional designs that would involve problem solving and critical thinking. Simulations, games, and real world situations can be used to as well as web 2.0 tools, research, group interactions and field trips to solve the problems. This type of teaching would cause the learner to be the teacher and the teacher would only facilitate the learning process. This way the students ask good questions because learning is actual taking place.