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Sharon Elin

Math4Mobile - The mLearning Way - 0 views

www.math4mobile.com

education math

shared by Sharon Elin on 03 May 08 - Cached
  • Sharon Elin on 03 May 08
     
    Use cellphones to teach math
Sharon Elin

Has Ontario taught its high-school students not to think? | University Affairs - 1 views

www.universityaffairs.ca/ool-students-not-to-think.aspx

pedagogy article2read

shared by Sharon Elin on 13 Dec 09 - No Cached
  • most of the students I see are not so much disengaged as poorly trained for university expectations. Students' ability to do analysis and synthesis seems to have been replaced by rote memorization and regurgitation in both the sciences and the humanities. This is a complaint that I hear from instructors in senior high-school classes through to professors in the humanities.
  • students do not really understand what they are doing even when they have covered the material in high school.
  • More important is the ability to relate these facts in new ways, to see them in a new light, and to bring quite disparate ideas together to solve new problems or create new forms of art. This ability to analyze and synthesize is what makes good scientists, writers, philosophers and artists. It is the ability needed to drive a knowledge-based economy.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Much of the new curriculum in the junior grades is considered by many experienced teachers to be beyond the mental development of students at that level. This encourages blind memorization rather than understanding.
  • Moreover, the new curriculum significantly reduces time spent on the visual arts, and was so content-heavy that it greatly limited the amount of time available for developing analytical and conceptual-understanding skills from kindergarten on
  • much of the teaching at the elementary level is now directed to passing those tests, as schools are rated publicly on the results
  • our students entering university are a year younger. The teenage brain is still developing its "executive functions" during this time, so students enter university with a year's less ability to analyze and plan ahead.
  • grade inflation is clearly present
    • Sharon Elin
      Sharon Elin on 13 Dec 09
       
      I agree this trend toward video and video games has reduced reading habits and turned the focus off text and onto multimedia delivery of information, but I'm not sure this trend alone has reduced analytical skills. Many video games require deep levels of analytical maneuvering to complete. A great book to read on this is Steven Johnson's book, "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter"
  • The trend among young people to move away from reading and towards video and video games, means they spend less time developing reading/writing/analytical skills
  • They do not appreciate that, even as students, they will be expected to develop new knowledge, not just regurgitate existing facts.
  • Students continue to demonstrate serious deficiencies in problem solving skills, basic math skills, and hands-on laboratory skills when they arrive at the university level
  • There may be 10 years of students who have been taught not to think, and reversing that effect will be not be easy without a determined effort.
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