Course Reflection

Audio Podcast version click here


I did some mathematics today. I figured that it would take me about eight minutes to correct one final exam. I have 103 students. If I were able to sit down without a break, I would spend thirteen hours and forty five minutes correcting papers. If I were to give myself a ten minute break every hour, I would be correcting tests for sixteen hours! On the last day of school some of the students would collect their tests and look at their mark. In the second week in June, most students are unconcerned about their paragraph structures or that “alot” is not one word.
These sixteen hours of paper correction will have minimal benefit for the students. The exercise does demonstrate the old way of thinking. The teacher gives the knowledge, the student receives some of that knowledge, and then the student tries to guess what the teacher will put on the exam. This is an ineffective teaching and learning process which needs to be changed.
The formative work that leads up to the summative assessment has the greatest value, but the same problems arise; most teachers do not want to read through, and correct sixteen hours of rough drafts. Some of this burden should be moved away from the teacher and back onto the student. Personal responsibility has been stressed to the student since kindergarten, but often peer pressure can have a greater effect. A thirteen year old middle school student might not care if they misspell a common word or create incomplete sentence for their teacher, but with the power of peer review via a blog, more emphasis is likely to be put on avoiding the simple mistakes that can easily be rectified by proofreading.
When I first began teaching, I thought that peer review might be an infringement on student privacy. In fact, there was a Supreme Court case on the very issue in 2002 where the Court unanimously agreed that peer review is not a violation of existing privacy laws (http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/00-1073P.ZO ). The implication was that students could work together to help each other learn, which in turn helped to chip away at the teacher centered method of education. My current philosophy is that I want to be somewhat removed from the direct teaching role and instead be a constructive criticizer and motivator.
This course has helped me to move away from being the center focal point of the classroom. With the use of blogs, wiki pages, and podcasts, the students can correct many of their mistakes before the end of the unit. Their motivation will come from the positive pressure of an audience and their own interest in the subject - which may have been stifled in a traditional classroom setting.
In the next two years, I will move away from paper and pencil and instead will create a classroom where students will submit virtually all of their work electronically. All students will be required to have a blog, which will serve as a living portfolio of past work. Google Documents will be used often for the sake of marking formative writing. All of these technological tools are available for immediate use. What I will need to work on is protocol for peer interaction; students are often too quick to point out the deficiencies of others. If an unsafe classroom environment develops all will be lost.
This course has taught me that the catalysis behind technological change is not educational software companies. Technological innovation is a democratic, grassroots movement where the marketplace of public opinion decides the direction of change. Youtube came before teachertube. Personal blogs predated educational blogs and radio podcasts were around before educational podcasts. I would think that within the next two years, ideas that have grown out of social networking sites will be applied to school children. What I excel at doing is seeing non-educational applications and adapting them in a productive way.

Here is a bit of "ED" talk comparing and contrasting the availability of technology to students and teachers in Kuwait's public and private schools.

http://mansiononthemoon.net/mp3/Walden%20Podcast.mp3