What Do the Student's Think?

Zach Werner, 14, loves the freedom he has in his cyber courses at Strayer Middle School in Quakertown. “Instead of being textbook based, it’s a more open world,” he said. “It’s not placed right in front of you.”

Yes, most kids jump at any chance to play educational games, search the Internet to research a project, connect with classmates and others online, and even do their homework digitally.

But many students also saw drawbacks to the increased use of technology in schools. In particular, students worry about the distractions and temptations of “self-paced learning,” something many advocates of digital education have touted as a way to get away from one-size-fits-all education to a more personalized experience.

Jonathan Wulffleff, 15, an eighth grader in Quakertown, is a fan of the cyber courses he’s taking in addition to his face-to-face classes. “If you have issues, you can watch the video again,” he said. “With a class, you only get it once and you have to remember it. ”Still, he said, “I slipped for a little while and was really upset, because last year I did really well.” The reason? “It was distraction related."

“I decided I could do all my classes at home and get it done faster,” said Maia Costanzo, 14, an honor roll student at Strayer. “It was pretty good, except I didn’t get a lot of my work done.”

There will always be drawbacks to everything someone tries to do to make our lives easier. But what we need to decide each individually is if our classrooms react well or not. It really and truly is different for everyone.



References

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of a Few Student-Teacher Based Online Softwares

Image
What Is It? Class Dojo is a communication app where teachers can share reports of their students to the parents. Reports of student's performance in class. Teachers, students and parents all have access to ClassDojo to see daily reports of progress and feedback. Although ClassDojo's main purpose is a behavior management tool. It aims to help the hard-to-reach students. Example of Point System Positive: Helping others, on task, participating, perseverance, teamwork, working hard. Needs Work: disrespect, no homework, off task, talking out of turn, unprepared. What is the Student's Job? Each student gets their own profile, where they can create an avatar that represents them. The teacher then runs the class through a tablet or computer. Giving positive or negative points (dojos) through out the day or lesson. And the device makes a notification noise letting the students know that the teacher is giving points. So the student's job is act accordingly a
Read more

Classroom Technology Tool Recommendations

Screencastify Ok, fine! You may have heard of us by now, but we pulled some strings to get ourselves included on this list. Our super simple screen recorder gives teachers the ability to  clone themselves,  provide helpful  student feedback , and  assess student achievement . If you're looking to create your own videos to flip your classroom, look no further! Viewpure Looking to use online videos in your classroom? Chances are you'd prefer to present this information to your students without the advertisements. ViewPure allows you to input your desired url and out pops a link for you to share with students (advertisement free!). Of course, there are other tools that will allow you to do much more with a YouTube video like Edpuzzle  But, if your objective is purely to create a "pure" video, look no further than ViewPure. AutoDraw AutoDraw adds a new dimension to the classic white-boarding app! (We know: it's not technically a video application. But, whit
Read more

Types of Classroom Technology (That your student may be using!)

Electronic Whiteboards Electronic whiteboards are very effective for group instructions. They are used for group presentations which enhance learning, and also students find it more compelling. Educators can use whiteboards to teach Languages, Social Studies, Sciences, and Mathematics. Electronic whiteboards are interactive such that, the teacher can project a diagram from a laptop onto the board and draw on it to help students understand quickly. Desktops and Laptops More teaching applications and classroom software are being introduced into the technology market. This drives the need for schools to get sophisticated computers with powerful processors to run the said applications. Classroom software help in managing and storing of student records. Computers contribute to abolishing the need for bulky encyclopedias and dictionaries as students can quickly look up information on the internet. Monitoring software can assist in gauging the level of understanding of students by;
Read more