METU EDS 544

There must be a balance between private & government schools!

Since I started my school education,I have witnessed this problem. Unfortunately it is getting worse. How come a government cannot provide satisfactory education and instruction to its people and children? How dare to push them to pay more and fulfill their own education? Turning the private courses into private schools do not change anything. And as usual, teachers and the students are worst affected from th situation.

Changing dershanes to private schools is not a solution to provide better education to society for free. The only change is that you can go to private schools with bursary or half-bursary. It means that they just moderated the money transaction. In addition, they will make teachers take exams throughout their careers which is actually not related to the conversion process. Therefore, the attempt to make dershanes extinct is a starting move that can be supported but these private schools should be converted to public schools in order to provide a high-quality education to all children for free. That is one of the most primary duties of the governments.

"impact of technology" part made me think that using technology in education is not valuable without how to use it. The project FATİH is generally taken a big step of using technology in state schools. "What is the cost?" "Are they necessary?" "Will our teachers use it?" are most asked questions. However, "How to use it?" is rare. Here with the word "use" I don't refer to running the devices. I mean the way technology be used in accordance to the educational objectives. As Chomsky says, without knowing what to do, using educational technology effectively is difficult.

There were several points that got my attention in this video. The first one was Chomsky's sentence saying that education had a value in itself. The purpose of it was to create "better" human beings, not bigger human capital for money. At this point, he opposed to idea that all generations should be given enough knowledge about math and science in order to increase people with scientific knowledge that will lead to more money income. Rather, education should foster the ideas of being independent in thoughts, being creative, having the ability and willingness to pursue one's own interest, and learning to learn on one's own. The second one was the analogy that Chomsky used. He made an analogy between technology and a hammer. He said that with a hammer you can either construct a building or smash a school down. This is about how you use the hammer, and it is the same with technology. Thus, it is more important that for what purpose we will use the technology than simply how to use technology. The last one was about achievement tests. Chomsky said that tests do not have so much value. You can pass a test after studying hard for about 3 weeks. Nevertheless, it does not mean that you will remember even the names of the topics that was covered in the exam after 3 weeks of the exam. That's why exploration, self learning, project-based learning and formative assessment is much more important and promising compared to achievement tests.

Because of the recent changes in educational system, many teachers suffer from being redundant. Some of them are also paid less than the cleaning staff!

I think oral incentives such as "You Can Do It!" are the part of class dynamics.

when ı watch this video, I realised that in little age we can create learning enviroment without losing motivation and active participation. You can find also kindergarten or higher level version of this video on youtube. Behaviorism signs can be seen in it. Because repetition of whole sentences is the learning way for this classroom. Thıs seems to be effective but another issue is the permanence of knowledge. I hope it is permanent that it seems very enjoyful class.

I also appreciate the class environment used in the video. Gestures, repetitions, practice on their own in pairs, materials were collaboratively used, which is very nice and especially very beneficiary for the 1. grade.

My best choice of educational metaphor among the slides: http://goo.gl/clcMR (Just click) Not just because of the "bike" :) But because of 1- Advice for instructor to control his/her power: Use your knowledge power in favor of the student not just for your ego! 2- Let him do it! By the way i like bikes also :D

I like the one which teachers cultivate the feeds of knowledge, they plant within their students. Teaching is the long process and requires more effort from both teacher and student. And also suitable land is te essential one in order to constitute knowledge.

The tenth slight is interesting for me. "Teaching is like crossing borders..." I think that we can associate the border with instruction or kinds of instructional methods or theories because on one side there is the individual who learns and on the other side there is the individual who teachs. Therefore the "border" can refer to the instruction as an instrument between the teaching and learning processes.

You can find the story of this system at that page and also photos from the old schools in America. Also it gives information about student profile, evaluation system, philosophers' names, etc.

Clusty is a search engine which makes clusters of your search. It provide easiness to students while making research on the internet. Based on keywords, the similar websites are categorized so that a more organized amount of knowledge is provided to learners. please try it by writing a keyword like "fotosentez".

The topic is about charter schools in US. It is not easy to understand what is charter school but it is like a publicly founded school where the "educational experience is qualitatively different". They just try different style of learning. "Charters were originally a progressive movement (called the "small schools" movement) started by University of Massachusetts professor Ray Budde and American Federation of Teachers leader, Al Shanker to explore best practices for education without bureaucracy." (wikipedia: charter school) Quote from the original text "Students taught by teachers with at least five years' experience outperformed students with less experienced teachers, regardless of the type of school attended, but charter school students with inexperienced teachers did significantly worse than students in traditional public schools with less experienced teachers. (The impact of this finding is compounded by the fact that charter schools are twice as likely as traditional public schools to employ inexperienced teachers.)" This means that experienced teachers are better than in experienced ones (Not suprised?) but more importantly it shows us that if you try something new it is better to have an experienced teacher :)

As far as I understand, if you have a brilliant idea about the ways that the education can be implemented, you can ask for being a charter school. As a charter school, you are free from governmental regulations and obligations. However, your performance is monitored closely. In that schools, new innovative methods are tried out, and apparently inexperienced teachers are not successful at all comparing to traditional ones. This is because the experience. I remember my internship time. As an intern teacher, I had difficulty even implementing techniques that I had been taught throughout my undergraduate career. It was because concrete experiences are much more hard to accomplish that abstract ones. And self-evidently being "concretely experienced" needs time. After years and years in active teaching, teachers naturally can have the ability to integrate innovative methods in their teaching. If the innovation is surprising (like technology integration while experienced teachers might not have enough knowledge), they at least have the ability not to confuse with the new innovation, they can resist and hold on their traditional experiences. New teachers may become confused with undergraduate knowledge and innovations since both of them are still not deeply got used to.

This is the biggest problem of universities and It should be solved as soon as possible. what is wrong with these faculty, are students worng with chosing them or are lecturer wrong whilw working for them or other else???

I think we have really problem about the role of arts&scince faculty. they are supposed to prepare students to be scientists or instructors but not teachers. however, when we look at capacity of these faculties make us think that Turkey has most crowded scientist population in the world! I think for arts&science faculty we need increase in quality but decrease in numbers of capacity.

The mission and vision of the arts and science faculties should be presented clearly to high school students or to people who are about to make a decision about a department. Unfortunately, being a university graduate is perceived like a rare feature so most of the high school graduates try to enter a university avoiding the profession and department. Also, the students who hold a BS degree of a department of arts and science faculty should have given more opportunities, like scholarships or job opportunities, so that they will be able to continue their graduate education in a arts and science faculty.

A paleontologist man who is committed to the theory of evolution like a religion and a modern hippie woman who believes in all kinds of weird spiritual staff arguing about evolution. One of the best parts of the tv show Friends.

A map of social theories 1000-2000

According to Thorndike, learning occurs via the association between the sensations and the impulse (action). As for checking his theory, he created puzzle boxes for the animals that he used for his experiments. He put the animals into the boxes and measured the time they spent for learning to open the door. He discovered that animals do not have enough ability to figure out the results of their actions. They find the solution with trial and error process and mostly by chance. After finding the solution (that is the solution that leads to the correct impulse, namely escaping the door), the time for operating the correct response to a specific situation decreases. However, when the reinforcement is removed (in this experiment, escaping the door is prevented), then the corresponding sensation (attempt to pull down the lever) disappears (This event can remind us the term "extinction" used by Pavlov in his classical conditioning theory). After introducing the reinforcement again, sensation reoccurs but the animal needs time to make the escaping operation more quickly again as he learnt before removing the stimuli.

Erdem, thanks for sharing. I will use this in my ed psych course as well.

Thanks for that video. It has been a great experience for me to see what I learned before theoretically. Now, I feel that I understand the experiment better. Such videos are very effective in enhancing learning.