Photo Stories Continued...

Whoever believed that if you're having fun, you must not be learning, didn't live during the information era. There is so much that students enjoy learning, when they are not in the classroom...but as soon as you step foot in a class, not fun! That's why we need to learn in the way that is just natural for us and the internet is how I look for information and technology (blogs, videos) is how I express what I learn. That is how we need to work with our children in our classrooms as well as offer information to our collegues.

Children required to sit still for hours more than is natural for them...than is natural for adults; being taught to be like everyone else by being required to take every subject and like it for twelve years of education...then being asked to be different and interesting and know what they want to do with their life by age 18...these are my experiences with school. These are reasons why change in the classroom is necessary, especially today. The videos for this week were great; I had seen the Did you know? facts in a different video presentation. I was good at school and was okay with learning the way I was taught until I realized that I didn't remember very much of what I learned and that, because my education prepared me very little for anything in the real world, I was suddenly up the creek without a paddle when I left high school. I think this is because everything about school tends to go against everything important and real in a human's (child's) world. Children are rarely studying what is important to them and so very little interest is taken in what they do and school just becomes a right of passage, whether or not the actual tools it provides even matter. Even now that I am studying to be a teacher, I can't seem to shake the stigma that, "School is boring." I find I procrastinate my work just because that is what you do with school and other things in the category of things you don't like. But I do like what I am doing now and am very excited about my future in education but because the term "school" is applied to my studies, they come after I've "studied" everything else interesting I can get my hands on...interesting facts on the Internet, a good book, emails, Facebook, world news, etc. But the change urged in the videos is that school can be a real place of learning...a place that gives direction to unique minds with limitless access to information. The difference is that, in order to help students succeed, they must be able to seek information they care about from means they feel comfortable with. They use technology every day in their recreation, why not in their education as well?