Educate Using What?
In my last post the word educate was examined. The next step today is what will we use to educate? Let’s examine the possibilities.
1. Textbooks–are commonly the thing thought of first when you talk about, “What are you teaching?” Why? Because it is easy. It is easy to have someone else write content, write a worksheet, make a scope and sequence of what to teach, and tell you exactly what information is important.
2. Classic Literature–Dr. Suess, Irene Hunt, E. B. White, Hans Christian Anderson, Johanna Spyri, Kenneth Grahame. These are just a fraction of the authors. Picking classic literature will give you lessons, or morals, that the students will learn from. Seems like a ton of work.
3. On-line Sources–web sites, pod casts, streaming media, digital story telling, blogging. Again, just a fraction of things that are available. Again, sounds like a lot of work. Nothing is to well organized and there is just a ton of information that is available.
4. Simulations–mostly that word today means digital games/videos. However, a simulation is a shortened or brief form of a real world experience. Remember in 1st grade you had a “store” in your classroom where you could “shop”. The store wasn’t to teach you to clip coupons, though, it was to get you comfortable with money, making change, and place values in real life.
Now look at these four possibilities. Why is number one used more frequently? What would preclude a teacher from using number two, or three, or four? Which ones would you prefer to be taught by? Which would you like for your children?
Next week–What should be used to educate?
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I think that number one is used more frequently because it is all facts there are no opinions in the textbooks. Number two might not be used so much because maybe some teachers or people know that if you read a book and really know what it is saying you can learn from it, or if it is very obvious that you can learn from it then the students might just refuse to read it because the don’t like to learn. As you noted in number three the internet is very disorganized and there are plenty of websites that are on the same topic that say different things, some are lies but only about one tells the truth, and sometimes it is hard to find that one website. Finally number four might not be used because in videos the person giving information can be confusing to others where if it was in words you can read it one way and stop where it confuses you and translate those words without missing any of the video. I personally like the textbooks because it is a profesional in his own spot of expertise doing what he or she loves to do.
Brenna