Edublogging Molly

So, after having read Abby G's post and recommendation of Ewan McInosh's blog, I decided to check it out.   (This was after browsing through a couple of other blogs, mostly english teacher blogs from ladies - they did not catch my interest.  Huff English didn't seem to have a lot of thought recent provoking content)  I started to catch the edublogging fever and found a couple of super interesting sites - Ewan's as mentioned and also Bill Ferriter and Lauren Fardig - the previous MACer.  I advise everyone to check these sites out.

At McIntosh I watched a short video on his home page created at an international education conference.  It was really cool to see that people from all over the world can get together to try to work on these problems. I then explored a little and found my way to a TEDx talk that McIntosh had done.  TEDx is not the same as TED, basically the x indicates it is an unofficial event.  Though unofficial, he still had a substantial audience, clearly this guy is quite prominent in some circles.

His talk was about striving to produce students that are "problem finders" instead of "problem learners."  He argues that when kids can decide their own problems they have a vested interest and are therefore more involved.  He mentions that many problems that we ask students to solve are problems that they have no vested interest in.  For most cases, this seems to be true.  This type of practice had been performed in a classroom and he states that the students were so involved in solving these problems that they were standing up and cheering for each other.  Clearly, this type of learning is desirable however he makes no mention of how to control what content they learn.  If the students are deciding, then the students are deciding.

Would this practice mean the elimination of a practice altogether??

More to come . . .

So I also browsed through Bill Ferriter's blog and I must admit, aspects of it were somewhat depressing.  He speaks to being bogged down by curriculum standards and teaching for the test rather than encouraging real creative student thought like he used to.  He says he had to change because his students were scoring too low.  I won't completely understand this situation until I become more familiar with the tests my students will be taking and how what I think is good practice either does or does not translate to these texts.

For example, promoting intellectual character is one thing that I really value.  Will this show up on any test?  Likely, no.  This is a pretty discouraging notion.  Even in my own studies, I've never been someone that values achievement -  I value learning. I realize that they are closely linked.  I hope this link will show up on the tests.