Learning to Unlearn

   After reading "Chapter 3 - Learning to Unlearn" of The Connected Educator, by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, I now have a better understanding of the need to unlearn concepts. While teaching, teachers must be prepared to unlearn their previous method of teaching so they can learn to efficiently teach their new class of students; this can be for the purpose of differentiation or simply to appeal to the next generation of youths.
   Humans understand concepts better when it is closer related to their interests. Why not make the class revolve around the students instead of the students revolving around the class. Classes should be more student oriented, students today rely on technology on almost everything (entertainment, social connecting, and other things).
   Unlearning sounds like a bad thing but is necessary when teachers have to unlearn what they learned about their last class to learn about their next class. Maybe students would do better with assignments different from the usual read a book and write a paper routine. Creating different types of assignments can keep the class interested or at least not bored. There may be some points where the class/teacher is bored. nevertheless, you truly learn when you are lost and you learn your way when you find it in the dark.

Interactive Whiteboards in Today's Classroom

The IWB or interactive white board has sparked many discussions since it arrived in some classrooms around 2007. Most of these discussions revolved around basic questions such as, do we need them?, Are they worth the money?, and most importantly, will they help students by increase test scores?

The Need

   

Stephanie McCrummen of the Washington Post wrote an article, "Some Educators" and explained some of the reasons she believes schools buy smart boards. She says some schools buy them for the soul purpose of claiming their school is "innovative" and just as smart as the others who have smartphones. Schools sometimes buy them to keep up with the competition schools. a better way to stand out is to have good morality and pitch "our school does not need so called "smart" boards because we have smart teachers" instead of our school is innovative because we have blackboards that we can plug our computers into.

Pricing by Dell

   I believe these new boards are not for every school. If a school can not provide books for every student to take home when it is necessary defiantly should not buy these boards. These boards prices average at $1,500 and cap around $7,000; it would be foolish to buy multiple boards if you do not have basic supplies while at the same time there is no actual purpose in buying one when there are more than one classroom in every school. 

Does It Help?
   In some cases students test scores did go up after a new smart board was introduced to the class. There were still a sufficient number of  test scores which did non rise of remained the same. This is enough evidence to mark smart-board's claim to raise test scores void. It is proven that student presented with the new concept of a screen everyone can interact with by touch will pay more attention to lessons. This claim is true to some extent, psychologists have proven that students (especially middle level and under) response to new concept and objects. After these new objects are familiarized they will fall into the same boring category as everything else that used to be new such as, dry-erase boards, computers, etc. It only takes one to three weeks for something to become familiarized after that students will be falling asleep again until the next $1500 tool is presented. A better way to teach is to get students attention by connecting to their individual personnel  or even their generations' interests. Repetitively buying short-term attention grabbing gimmicks does not seem like a good teaching method to me.