bus driver and student fight

I have been watching this video for days and have some thoughts on it.  I am sure you have all heard of it, but in case you haven’t you need to watch it.  I have some issues with what is happening to the student and the bus driver.  First, what is their policy about cell phones on the bus.  Second, did the bus driver hit the student.  I didn’t see the bus driver do anything but try to keep the student on the bus.  Third, why is it this video allowed to be seen by the public.  I thought that the only people allowed to see the tae were the judge and Administration.  At least that is what we are told.  you can’t show a film that has students in it beside the parents of that child. This whole thing makes me feel like they are trying to hide something.  Like there is a hidden message the school district is trying to send.  What do you think?

Chapter 2: Personal Thinking

I just got through with Chapter 2 in The Children’s Machine, by Seymour Papert.  Chapter two is exactly as the title states, personal thinking.  Seymour Papert discusses his desire to learn and  how he felling in love with learning.  His describes many different things that helped him to learn  how his own  learning takes place.   I would like to share a couple of the passages in the book that really stuck out to me:”Every one of us has built up a stock of intuitive, empathic, commonsense knowledge about learning.   This knowledge comes into play when one recognizes something good about a learning experience without knowing the outcome.”When I read this I thought about when students learn and they don’t even know they are learning.  We are teachers need to learn to incorporate that learning into our classes.  And as the author points out, that is what we should be using as our objective measures not tests.  The other passage that I liked goes back to the idea that there are two sides to the brain:”By analogy, one might say that when it comes to thinking about learning, nearly all of us have School side of the brain which thinks that School is the only natural way to learn, and a personal side that knows perfectly well it is not.”  You know this is the biggest dilemma I have with teaching.  I learned the way that I am teaching, so why can’t the students of today do the same.  I also know that there are other ways to learn and that I am capable of doing it, if I just knew how.  I don’t feel my undergraduate teaching classes were really good at helping me to actually teach, they just prepared me for the paperwork.  Of course, taking these classes are moving me in the right direction. 

Chapter 1: The Children’s Machine

I would like to first say that I purchased this book worried that I got the wrong one, but that was what Murray’s bookstore said so I got it.  Thanks Nate, for allowing us to read the one we purchased, even if it wasn’t the right one. For those that are reading the other book, I am reading, The Children’s Machine, by Seymour Papert. The first chapter is titled Yearners and Schoolers.  The yearners are the ones that are yearning for a change in the school system.  They know that we are needing a change, but are unsure of what to do to create the change.  The schoolers are the ones that don’t realize we need a “megachange” and feel that we aren’t perfect, but who is.  The schoolers also don’t feel that our schools are falling behind, we just need to tweak what we are doing a little. The chapter discusses how all the learning theories from the past are not how students learn anymore.  Does a infant learn from the parents lecturing them? NO, they learn from the environment and examine things in their own way and make connections between things in their own way.  Of course, they are guided by their parents, but their parents aren’t telling them what connection to make.   So, what we need to do is to make schools model that learning.  Let the students use the Internet and technology to learn for themselves in their own way.  Each student has their own ideas and they each come from unique backgrounds so they will each take something different away from a learning experience.  The major concept, and I agree with it totally, (I’m a yearner) is that we need a “MEGACHANGE” in our schools.