In my previous blogs, I began talking about ways teachers could improve their classroom/instruction on a low budget. Then I moved into ways to incorporate technology at little or no cost. In this post I was curious to see how education was done when there is no budget. How can education be brought to students in places where it seems almost impossible for learing to take place. I found a video on TEDtv called Education Innovation in the Slums. In this video, Charles Leadbeater talks about radical new forms of education, especially those found in the slums around the world and compares them to the United States' education system.
One of the most interesting things he talks about in his video is that education should be a pull not a push. The United States' education system is definatly a push, as soon as students enter school everything is pushed at them: knowledge, exams, time tables, etc. He states that education should be a pull, it should pull students in by presenting learning through productive activity. Education should start from questions not from knowledge, from games not from lessons, and should be engaging before teaching takes place.
"We need a global wave of social entrepreneurship to create highly motivating, low cost ways to learn at scale in the developing world." Charles Leadbeater states that American education "fails to reach the people it most needs to serve" and that it often "hits the target but misses the point".
Another interesting thing Charles Leadbeater talks about in this video is Mapping Education Innovation: (see video for table of information)
http://www.tedtv/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_education.html
The second paragraph of your blog post reminded me a lot of how we were supposed to teach science in the classroom the week that we taught. One of the things we were supposed to focus on was ABC (activity before content) and I know often teachers feel the pressure to focus so much on the content right away and wrap up the lesson with the activity. It is important that you hook students right away so they are interested in what they will be learning. I'm glad you brought that up!
ReplyDeleteI like the discussion about having education be a pull not a push. I was confused at first at what this meant, but after I continued reading I understood better. By pulling them we are getting them interested and ready to learn rather than pushing them into something they aren't eager to learn. When pulling someone in you need to do your best to keep their interest, where as a push is forced. Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting and I agree with what Jessica said about forgetting to use the ABC in my unit. The thought of a pull instead of a push is intriguing because it sounds so much nicer to me to pull students into their learning rather than pushing them in. I'm going to have to work on this, but I feel like it will be a better classroom experience if we all can do it!
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