Week 7 Blog

In the article “Financing the Education of High-Need Students” by Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk about how special education is broken. He said the too many children that is in special-education system are graduating from school out any skill, knowledge and competencies that they need to have success is life. I will have to agree with Mr. Finn because my great nephew graduate a couple years ago and he was in special education class because he was a slow learner but when he graduated he could even count money and that is something that he should have learn in the elementary. I also think that the special education need a major make over because these student might be slow learn but it is the education system  responsible that these children get a good education.

The article “Schools Improve When Leader Stop Rationalizing Mediocrity” discussed the failing school district. Eric A. Hanushek and Paul E. Peterson stated that Program for International Student Assessment released the test score that show that student in other countries are progressing faster than student in the United States. Student in the United States are ranking 26^th in math, 21^st in science and in reading 17^th place against other countries.  Hanushek and Peterson stated in their article that the American Association of School Administrator believes that problem is not that the school is falling behind but that the schools are pulling apart. It also stated that the United State will not explain why the schools  has the inability to teach our students the basic skill in science, reading and math while student in other countries are being equipped for the modern global economy. It is now time for the United State to start putting more money in the education of our student and they should also hold the school system more accountability for the each student getting a good education.

Week 6 blog

Chapter 6 “The Social Web” Richardson talk about that there are over I billion people now online because of the social media. Mostly everyone has a twitter account and is connect to some kind of social booking marking services. People twit about anything that they think that the public would want to read about. People have to be careful on what they twit about because we have some sick people in this world that will use those twits against them. I did sign up for a twitter account because of this class, and I have been getting twits from everyone that I sign up with. If you want to know anything about a person sign up to get connect to their twitter account. Because of the social media we are able to learn anything we want to know about a person. 

Week 6

I read the article “Let’s say enough is enough to lousy school” by Geoffrey Canada he states that the educational prospect has not changed in 50 years. He made a good point when said that it is the parent responsibility when a child fail academically, but I feel that some of the responsibility also fail on the teacher. If a teacher has a child in their class that is failing then the teacher should notify that parent and they both should come up with a solution that will help that child to succeed in school. Canada also stated “Taking care of children so they can succeed in school and life should be the floor and not the ceiling of our expectations.” A lot of time the parent put the blame on the teacher but if we have failing school it is the community and the government responsibility to make sure that every child is able to get a good education so that they will be able to succeed in life. I feel like Canada we have spent a lot on money in Afghanistan so why can we spent that same amount money on education in the United States.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/26/opinion/canada-education-basics/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29

“Great Teacher Can Teacher more student, even without raising class sizes” by Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel suggest that school system shift to a new school model that would extend the reach of excellent teacher teaching wisely. This model would let teacher add new paraprofessional to their teaching team. The paraprofessional would do the teacher administrative paperwork and oversee the skill practice, any project work that the student need to complete, and digital instruction at school. This would leave the teacher to a one-teacher-one-classroom mode. The teacher would be able to spend more time with each student on this model. The article stated that teacher have achieved outstanding result with this model. Hassel believes that students learn better with this model and that teacher has more time to plan and collaborate within their teaching team. If this model can help the student give more one on one time from the teacher I am for this type of school because sometime some student just need a little more of the teacher time to be able to succeed in a class.

http://educationnext.org/great-teachers-can-teach-more-students-even-without-raising-class-sizes/

Week 5 Blog

Wikipedia

Before we started using Wikipedia there are 7 things that we should about the site.

1 What is it? It is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can post to

2. Whose doing it? Anyone can create and edit Wikipedia

3. How does it work? When you research a topic at google the first search result is usually Wikipedia.

4. Why is it significant? Because it the user in control of the material that they received, it let the students take part in the collaborative process of creating and revising the content of the material.

5. What are the downsides? The material that you read on Wikipedia might not be true material because people can post their opinion on that site.

6. Where is it going? Wikipedia is not going anywhere because you have to many people the use the information for that site.

7 What are the implication for teaching and learning? It gives student the opportunity to generated knowledge and it helps the student to be better researcher because whatever information that they find on the Wikipedia site has to be further researched.

Wikipedia is not a very reliable site for a student to use and most teachers will not let the student quote any information from Wikipedia because of that reason. Wikipedia can a start when you are researching but it cannot be the only research that is use in the process.

Wiki

Wiki

I really did not know what a wiki was until I started this Master in Education Technology. I found out that a wiki is nothing but a web page that you can design the way you want to and you can post whatever you want to on your page. I do see where wiki can be very useful in the classroom these days because all student now have access to a computer and the teacher can step up a wiki page just for their classroom so that the student can post their homework or class work to it.