A New Pedagogy?

Are Our Kids Ready for This? When I read this I agreed with him 100%. How important is it that we make our students ready for these types of self-directed learning opportunities? It is very good to teach our students and to get them ready for self directed learning. We need to make sure we prepare our students as much as possible. How can we begin to weave some of these types of experiences into our current curriculum? We can help teach our students how to make goals and show them when they reach them. We have them learn how do be independent and strong.

School as Video Game? I think it is a good idea to se video games to teach. Its not saying replace school with video games. I the students would use math to figure out how much time they have to play and to add up the points. They use several of the multiple intelligences for example they use logical-mathematical intelligence by doing math. They use linguistic intelligence by reading and talking with each other about what to do next in the game. They use spatial intelligence to find out where they are and where the bad guys are in the games and need to figure out how to win. They use bodily-kinesthetic intelligence by jumping up and down and moving around. The music in the game help students develops musical intelligence. They help build both interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence by working with others to win the game or when they work alone. Finally last but not least naturalist intelligence comes into play because yes they are inside playing but there are trees in the games and animals so that helps build the naturalist intelligence.

The Assessment Problem? “The Ed Leadership essay suggests that while these “21st Century Skills” are really any century skills, the path to “success” (depending on how you define that) is more dependent on having those skills today than ever before.” We need to teach out student’s not only basic math and English that we have been teaching for a life time but lifelong skills. “Maybe it’s just that the people in charge don’t have the creativity, innovation and problem solving skills to figure this out. (They are products of the system, after all.) But here’s the deal: so what? School’s starting, and it’s 2010 which means we’re in “doing both” mode. We’re making sure the kids pass the test, but we also have to make sure that our own assessments are doing more to evaluate our students ability to do all those other things we want them to be able to do that aren’t currently being assessed.” We need to make sure when our students leave our classrooms they are ready for the next level not only in school but in life too. It’s not far that some children are better at test then others and it’s not far we judge them on how well they do on stupid test. We as teacher see how much a child has improved and we get the blessing to watch them grow. Test and our government do not watch or see the children grow and it’s unfortunate for them. They just look at a test and say well Thomas is not doing well in math but they don’t know that Thomas might be an RSP student where teachers know where their students strengths and weaknesses. I think assessments should be up to the teachers not the government.